LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Chap, Copyright No.. 

ShelfL'U„C 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




W. J. LHAMON, M. A. 



Studies in Acts 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 
BOOK OF BEGINNINGS 

Br W: J/LHAMON, M. A. 

WITH AN 

INTRODUCTION BY A. McLEAN, 
Corresponding Secretary of the Foreign Christian Missionary Society 




St. Louis 

CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY 
1897 

JAN 17 1898 \ 



36 ^ v 



211 8 



Copyrighted, 1897, by 
CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, 



affectionately IfnscribeO 

XTo flby jfatber ant) flDotber 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction 7 

Preliminary Essay . . . ... . . 11 

I. The First Sermon after the Ascension ... 29 

II. The First Church ....... 51 

III. The First Persecutions . . . . . .71 

IV. The First Martyr 89 

V. The First Gentile Convert . . . . . 105 

VI. The First Gentile-Christian Church . . . 123 

VII. The First Martyr Apostle . . . . 143 

VIII. The First Foreign Missionaries .... 159 

IX. The First Foreign Missionary Journey . . . 177 

X. The First Church Council ..... 199 
XI. The First Missionary Journey in Europe . .215 

XII. Paul's First Imprisonment in Rome ... 237 

XIII. The First History of the Holy Spirit in the 

Church . 259 

XIV. Excursus. The Apostle Paul as Organizer and 

Unifier 275 

Notes and Comments 301 



INTRODUCTION. 



At Oriental feasts there is an officer who tastes the food 
and drink before they are served and certifies to their whole - 
someness and palatableness. My duty is similar to that of 
the official taster. I have tasted the following pages and 
have found them ' 'the joy and rejoicing of my heart. ' ' I am 
persuaded that no one can read them with care and moral 
earnestness without profit. 

The Lord endowed the writer of these essays with a large 
soul. He gave him insight and independence. Mr. Lhamon 
is a man of scholarly tastes and scholarly attainments. His 
experience in the pulpit has taught him to present the pro- 
f oundest truths in such a way that the common people can 
grasp and remember them. He has given years of patient 
and reverent study to the Book of Acts. He has read what 
the best commentators have written. In these essays he 
gives results and omits processes. A glance at the Table 
of Contents will show that he has seized on points of capital 
importance. He gives his readers the cream of what he has 
learned. 

Bacon, writing of books, said, ''Some are to be tasted, 
others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and 
digested. ' ' One will not read many pages of this book be- 
fore he will know to which class it belongs. Though written 
by a scholar it can be read by all. I have not found a dull 
or obscure sentence in it from first to last. I may not agree 
with the author in every detail ; that is a merit rather than 



INTRODUCTION 



a defect. It would be a poor compliment to the writer if I 
did. These eloquent and luminous pages have helped me 
mightily and have provoked me to study the Book of Acts 
with renewed interest. I believe they will affect others in 
the same way. 

This book appears at the nick of time. The Sunday- 
schools are going to devote most of the coming year to the 
Acts of the Apostles. Teachers and scholars need the best 
helps in the market. They need the commentaries that they 
may study the text word by word. They will need these 
essays in addition to the commentaries. The plan of the 
work afforded the author freedom for enlarging upon points 
of historic and doctrinal moment, for an enlarged treatment 
of the character and influence of the Apostle Paul, and for 
such a unique and consecutive treatment of subjects as is 
found in the last two essays. In these Mr. Lhamon sets 
forth, in a systematic way, the historic work of the Holy 
Spirit in the Apostolic times, and the three principles which 
guided Paul in the organization of churches. They are: 
The historic or conservative ^principle ; liberty under the 
direction of the Holy Spirit; and expediency in many matters. 
The one supreme thing is love. The discussion of these 
principles is particularly vigorous and suggestive. In my 
opinion, the reader will find this study of the Book of Acts 
both fresh and helpful. 

A. McLean. 

Cincinnati. 



t 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 



The Book of Acts is unique. It is the key-book 
of the New Testament. It is " The Gospel of the 
Holy Spirit." It is a history, a biography, a mis- 
sionary manual, and an apology. As a history of the 
first church it is indispensable ; as a character sketch 
of the greatest apostle it is priceless; as the manual 
of his missionary achievements it is of thrilling 
interest; as an apology it pleads the innocence of 
Paul when on trial in the courts of the Roman 
Empire. 

In this book we are brought to the fulfillment of 
ancient prophecy and the beginning of modern his- 
tory. In it we pass from the ethnic to the universal 
in religion, and from era to era in the providence of 
God. It is from first to last the story of a majestic 
battlefield with Jerusalem and Antioch and Ephesus 
and Corinth and Rome for its strategic points, with 
weapons of warfare not carnal, but spiritual, and 
mighty through God to the pulling down of strong- 
holds, and with victories bloodless and admirable 
over principalities and powers, and spiritual wick- 
edness in high places. 

The Gospel according to Luke, his " first treatise," 
is the record of " all that Jesus began to do and to 
teach; " this is the record of what the apostles of 

(11) 



12 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



Jesus began to do and to teach. As regards the 
Savior's church it is the book of beginnings. There 
is the beginning of spiritual enduement, the begin- 
ning of the Gospel ministry, the beginning of con- 
versions, the beginning of organization, the beginning 
of emancipation from legalism, and the beginning 
of world-wide evangelization. 

The evidential value of the book of Acts is unsur- 
passed. It is replete with facts that bear the stamp 
of genuineness. Fiction does not create sermons 
like that on Pentecost, or martyrdoms like that of 
Stephen, or conversions like that of Cornelius, or 
missionary heroism like that of Paul, or a society 
like the first church, united in love and Spirit-guided. 
At many points this book touches with delicacy and 
precision the geography, the history and the customs 
of the first century, both among the Jews and the 
Romans. The apostles Peter and James and Paul 
must forever hold their historic places side by side 
with Felix and Festus and Herod and Claudius and 
Nero, with this difference, that while the ordinary or 
even inferior careers of these Roman rulers are fully 
accounted for by quite the ordinary causes, the supe- 
rior careers of these apostles are not at all to be 
accounted for except by the historic presence of the 
Holy Spirit bearing witness to Jesus, and glorifying 
him through them. The careers of these men, and 
their historic and spiritual creations, refuse to vanish 
from sight in the crucible of the hyper-higher- 
critics. If Paul should be torn from our reason, he 



STUDIES IN ACTS 13 

would still cling to our hearts, and they to hiin. 
But having him, reason demands more, and Christ 
and the Holy Spirit, as the exponents of his conver- 
sion and career, become intellectual necessities. 

It is a matter of prime interest to know the con- 
clusions of the latest learned criticism regarding this 
book. Prof. W. M. Ramsay, in his great work enti- 
tled " St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen," 
published only last year, has this to say : 

"I may fairly claim to have entered on this inves- 
tigation without any prejudice in favor of the conclu- 
sion which I shall now attempt to justify to the 
reader. On the contrary, I began with a mind 
unfavorable to it, for the ingenuity and apparent 
completeness of the Tubingen theory had at one time 
quite convinced me. It did not then lie in my line 
of life to investigate the subject minutely; but more 
recently I found myself often brought in contact with 
the book of Acts as an authority for the topography, 
antiquities, and society of Asia Minor. It was gradu- 
ally borne in upon me that in various details the nar- 
rative showed marvelous truth. In fact, beginning 
with the fixed idea that the work was essentially a 
second century composition, and never relying on its 
evidence as trustworthy for first-century conditions, 
I gradually came to find it a useful ally in some 
obscure and difficult investigations." 

Following this frank statement of his personal 
experience, the author proceeds to an equally frank 
dismissal of all theories that would make the book 



14 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



a second-century production with mythical admix- 
tures and tendency purposes, or that would make it 
a piece of ill-assorted second-century patch-work 
from documents A, B, C, etc., by redactors L, II., 
III., etc. 

He says (page 10), 4 'All theories of this class imply 
that the atmosphere and surroundings of the work 
are of the second-century type; and such theories 
have to be founded on a proof that the details are 
represented in an accurate way and colored by 
second-century ideas. The efforts of that earlier 
school of critics were directed to give the required 
proof, and in the attempt they displayed a misappre- 
hension of the real character of ancient life and 
Roman history which is often astonishing, and which 
has been decisively disproved in the process of 
Roman historical investigation. All such theories 
belong to the pre-Mommsenian epoch of Roman his- 
tor} 7 ; they are now impossible for a rational and 
educated critic; and they hardly survive except in 
popular magazines and novels of the semi-religious 
order." 

Quite explicitly the author states his working 
hypothesis. "Acts was written by a great historian 
(a first-class historian, he says elsewhere), a writer 
who set himself to record the facts as they occurred, 
a strong partisan, indeed, but raised above partiality 
by his perfect confidence that he had only to describe 
the facts as they occurred, in order to make the truth 
of Christianity and the honor of Paul apparent. To 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



15 



a G-entile Christian, as the author of Acts was, the 
refusal of the Jews to listen to Paul, and their hatred 
of him as untrue to their pride of birth, must appear 
due to pure malignity; and the growing estrangement 
must seem to him the fault of the Jews alone. It is 
not my object to assume or to prove that there was 
no prejudice in the mind of Luke, no fault on the 
part of Paul ; but only to examine whether the facts 
stated are trustworthy, and leave them to speak for 
themselves (as the author does). I shall argue that 
the book was composed by a personal friend and 
disciple of Paul, and if this be once established there 
will be no hesitation in accepting the primitive 
tradition that Luke was the author." 

The reader is asked to bear with one more quota- 
tion from Prof. Eamsay's first chapter: 

"The characterization of Paul in Acts is so 
detailed and individualized as to prove the author's 
personal acquaintance. 1 Moreover, the Paul of Acts 
is the Paul that appears to us in his own letters, in 
his ways and his thoughts, in his educated tone of 
polished courtesy, in his quick and vehement tem- 
per, in the extraordinary versatility and adaptability 
which made him at home in every society, moving at 
ease in all surroundings, and everywhere the center 
of interest, whether he is the Socratic dialectician in 
the agora of Athens, or the rhetorician in its uni- 
versity, or conversing with kings and proconsuls, or 
advising in the council on shipboard, or cheering a 
broken-spirited crew to make one more effort for 



16 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



life. Wherever Paul is, no one present has eyes for 
any but him. Such a view could not have been 
taken by a second century author. The church in 
the second century had passed into new circum- 
stances, and was interested in quite different ques- 
tions. The catastrophe of the persecution of Domi- 
tian, and the effect produced for the time on the 
attitude of the church by the deliberate attempt to 
suppress and destroy it on the part of the imperial 
government, made a great gulf between the first cen- 
tury and the second century of Christian history." 

The leading arguments in favor of the authorship 
of Luke (in addition to the above) are, 

First, The traditions of the early church, which 
with one consent (authorities tell us) ascribe the 
authorship to the author of the Gospel according to 
Luke. 

Secondly, Similarity in literary style and method 
between Acts and the Gospel according to Luke. At 
least fifty words are peculiar to these two books. 
4 4 Luke being acknowledged as the author of the 
Gospel, we know from that source what the charac- 
teristics of his style are; and it is maintained that 
these reappear in Acts to such an extent that we can 
account for the agreement only by referring the two 
productions to the same writer." — Hachett. 

Thirdly, The evidence of what are called the 
" We-narratives." In several passages the writer uses 
the first personal pronoun in such a way as to indi- 
cate his companionship with Paul. These passages 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



1.7 



are xvi. 10-17 ; xx. 5-xxi. 18; xxvii. and xxviii. Great 
weight attaches to them, inasmuch as any other explan- 
ation than that of companionship seems impossible. 
Meyer says, "The WE-narrative, with its vivid and 
direct impress of personal participation, always 
remains a strong testimony in favor of a companion 
of the apostle as author of the whole book, of which 
that narrative is a part; to separate the subject of 
that narrative from the author of the whole, is a 
procedure of skeptical caprice." (See Essay XL) 

As to the date of the composition, the Variorum 
Bible says: "When and where the book of Acts 
was written must be a matter of mere conjecture. 
We only know that it must have been written after 
St. Luke's Gospel (75 A. D.)." This statement is 
perhaps too strong. However, there is little agree- 
ment among commentators. Hackett places it about 
63; Lumby, 63 to 70; Meyer about 80; Ramsay 
places the composition of Luke's Gospel 79-81, and 
that of Acts somewhat later. His arguments are 
more than usually interesting, and one cannot but 
feel their force. 

The chronology of the book of Acts is of the very 
first importance. It is practically the chronology of 
the New Testament. Luke, however, gives but few 
notes of time, and the difficulty of constructing a. 
series of dates has been great. The prophecy of 
Agabus (xi.28), and the date of the famine, extend- 
ing, as Prof. Ramsay thinks, into the year 46 A. D. 

(see Note), fixes the time of one of Paul's visits to 
2 



18 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



Jerusalem. This the same author seeks to identify 
with the visit described by Paul himself in Gal. 
ii. 1-10. If, then, this visit may be placed as late as 
46, and if the fourteen years named by Paul (Gal. 
ii. 1) includes the three years of his sojourn in Ara- 
bia, and dates therefore from his conversion, the 
latter event, together with the death of Stephen, 
would fall as early as 32 or 33. Some place the 
death of Stephen as early as 30 ; others as late as 36 
or 37. Meyer decides upon 33 or 34. Prof. Ram- 
say's argument and conclusion, as stated above, are 
entitled to great weight. 

Another date is given in xviii. 2. The edict of Clau- 
dius was in 52. It was probably in the same year 
that Paul met Priscilla and Aquila in Corinth. 

One of the closest calculations of time anywhere to 
be found is given by Prof. Ramsay on page 289 of 
the work above named. "In A. D. 57, Passover fell 
on Thursday, April 7. The company sailed away 
from Philippi on the morning of Friday, April 15 
(xx. 6), and the journey to Troas lasted till the fifth 
day, Tuesday, April 19. In Troas they stayed seven 
days, the first of which was April 19, and the last, 
Monday, April 25. Luke's rule is to state first the 
whole period of residence, then some detail of the 
residence. On the Sunday evening just before 
the start, the whole congregation at Troas met for 
the Agape; religious services were conducted late 
into the night ; and in the early morning of Monday 
the party went on board and set sail. In A. D. 56, 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



19 



58, 59, incidence of the Passover is not reconcilable 
with Luke's statistics, as is apparent from the 
attempts that have been made to torture his words 
into agreement." 

Still another important note of time is the appoint- 
ment by Nero of Portius Festus in the room of Felix 
(xxiv. 27). The date of this change assigned almost 
unanimously by scholars, is A. D. 60. Felix left 
Paul a prisoner in the hands of Festus. Under Fes- 
tus Paul made his appeal to Caesar, and was soon 
after sent to Rome. These circumstances fix the 
later years of Paul's life with almost absolute 
precision. 

Perhaps it will never be found possible to give 
absolute dates except upon a few points. It is hoped 
the following list will commend itself to readers as 
having a fair consensus of scholarship in its favor. 

The ascension of Jesus and the Pentecost follow- 
ing, May, A. D. 30; Death of Stephen and conver- 
sion of Paul, 32-33; Barnabas and Paul in Antioch, 
42-43; Death of James and Herod Agrippa, 44; The 
famine foretold by Agabus, 45-46; Paul's first mis- 
sionary journey, 47; Council in Jerusalem, 49-50; 
Paul's second missionary journey, 51-54; Paul's 
third missionary journey, 55-58; Paul's fifth and 
last journey to Jerusalem, 58; Paul's journey to 
Rome, 60 ; His first imprisonment under Nero, 61-63. 

The book of Acts presents us with a historic basis 
for our Christian faith. The personalities of Peter 
and Paul in history, and the impress of these men, 



20 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



especially the latter, upon their times and upon all 
succeeding times can never be doubted or denied. 
They are among the sanest and the stablest of all 
men, and they hazarded their lives in the furtherance 
of their mission. In the history that gathers itself 
around these two men as its principal figures, the 
natural and the higher-natural (what we call the 
miraculous) are inextricably interwoven. It is not 
possible to sift and to say, This is history and that is 
myth. The moment we attempt it, we find ourselves 
excluding as myths parts that stand related to the 
rest as cause to effect, and we find ourselves there- 
fore in the dilemma of accepting, as historic, facts 
and persons rendered by our exclusions more cause- 
less and mysterious than the things we had excluded. 
We are told on every hand that many a man of scien- 
tific temper and training is inclined, now-a-days, to 
grow reverent in the presence of the New Testament 
record of the higher-natural. Prof. Ramsay may be 
taken as an example. Speaking of "the marvels 
described in Acts," he says: "Twenty years ago I 
found it easy to dispose of them, but now-a-days prob- 
ably not even the youngest among us finds himself 
able to maintain that we have mastered the secrets of 
nature, and determined the limits which divide the 
unknown from the impossible. That Paul believed 
himself to be the recipient of direct revelations from 
God, to be guided and controlled in his plans by 
direct interposition of the Holy Spirit, to be enabled 
by divine power to move the forces of nature in a 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



21 



way that ordinary men cannot, is involved in this nar- 
rative. You must make up your minds to accept or 
reject it, but you cannot cut out the marvelous from 
the rest, nor can you believe that either Paul or this 
writer (Luke) was a mere victim of hallucinations." 

The historic verities of the book of Acts and its 
fixed dates have an important bearing upon the writ- 
ings of Paul and their value as witnessing to the truth 
of the Gospel narratives. Paul was a prisoner under 
Felix and Festus in 59 and 60. Before this date 
I. and II. Thessalouians, I. and II. Corinthians, 
Gralatians and Romans were written. In all these 
letters Paul testifies to the crucifixion and the resur- 
rection of Jesus, and he was not the man to put his 
life to the hazard for a myth or a fable or a fiction. 
From the resurrection of Jesus to the writing of the 
Book of Romans is in round numbers twenty-five 
years; Gralatians and I. and II. Corinthians fall 
within the same period. Such books do not spring 
by mythical processes from hallucination or fiction or 
falsehood in so short a time, and within the memo- 
ries of multitudes who as eye-witnesses of what 
really did happen were able and anxious to contra- 
dict them if they were false. Paul's testimony is 
practically contemporaneous; it is the testimony of 
one who was at the first an enemy of the cross ; it 
was heralded by him boldly everywhere; and upon 
him through all his ministry there beat the fierce his- 
toric light of Judaea in the days of Josephus, and of 
Rome in the times of Livy and Tacitus. By such 



22 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



lines of reason and research the doubters of to-day 
are to be convinced, if at all. "Never since the 
apostolic age has Christianity stood so proudly erect 
on her rendered reasons in the field of historic 
research as at the present hour." It is not enough 
to say that the historic basis of our Christian faith is 
left to us ; it is confirmed to us by critical and schol- 
arly research. It has been said, with striking force, 
that the mythical theory of Strauss died before its 
author, he having abandoned it before he died. We 
may rest assured that in a similarly relentless way 
time will weed out from the field of criticism the 
extremists and the erratics who are bound to be in it, 
and that sober scholarship will unceasingly protest to 
us that the apostles " did not follow cunningly 
devised fables when they made known to us the 
power and coming of our Lord Jesus," but that they 
were "eye-witnesses of his majesty." 

One thing there is in the book of Acts abso- 
lutely, and not as an accidental, but as an essen- 
tial part of it, and as inseparable from it as 
color and form and perfume from the petals of 
the rose. Eight times at least the phrase, " The 
Way," is used distinctively, and with technical pre- 
cision. The passages are ix. 2; xvi. 17; xviii. 25; 
xviii. 26; xix. 9; xix. 23; xxii. 4, and xxiv. 22. In 
the Revised Bible this phrase is several times 
printed with a capital W. The first of them is 
indicative of all of them. "But Saul, yet breath- 
ing out threatening and slaughter against the dis- 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



28 



ciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, and 
asked of him letters to Damascus unto the syna- 
gogues, that if he found any that were of the Way, 
whether men or women, he might bring them 
bound to Jerusalem." This must refer to Christ's 
"new and living Way," the way of salvation, the 
way by which the thousands came to him on the day 
of Pentecost, and by which the Ethiopian came, and 
Cornelius, and Lydia and her household, and the 
jailer and his household, and all the others whose 
conversions are at all fully described. This Way 
leads over the mountain of Calvary and down by the 
empty sepulcher, and on down by the waters of bap- 
tism, and so across to the land that is Christ's. It 
is the preaching of the incarnation, of the crucifixion, 
and of the resurrection of Jesus ; it is the faith be- 
gotten by this preaching; it is the confession of this 
faith in penitence and baptism ; and it includes the 
promise of the Holy Spirit. Absolutely this is the 
one well-worn highway that runs through the whole 
historic landscape that is presented to us in this 
book; it is the Way of Atonement, and we have been 
mournfully slow to find it and walk in it. 

On the other hand there is no systematic theology 
here. We look in vain for dogmatics and counter- 
dogmatics. This book is delightfully innocent of 
isms. It is not marred by a single one of our denom- 
inational names. It reverently refrains from mis- 
chievous attempts to measure the immeasurable. 
There is no theometry in it. Upon this point one is 



24 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



constrained to quote with entire approval Joseph 
Parker's vigorous words: 

"I have made no attempt to find a formal theology 
in apostolic preaching. No such theology is there to 
be found. The supposed finding of it anywhere has 
been the heaviest cross which the Risen Christ has 
had to carry, and the greatest hindrance to the 
extension of his reign. Theology is as indefinable as 
life. It admits of multitudinous expression, and, 
like inspiration itself, must take the color of the 
individual soul that receives it. As theology deals 
with the Infinite, it cannot admit of complete and 
final statement in words. There is always a nameless 
quantity beyond. An infinite theology should create 
an infinite charity, yet probably there is less charity 
in theology than in any other subject of human 
thought." 

Here is a church spiritually complete and doc- 
trinally invincible, yet with no formal creed. Here 
are multitudes of believers, at one with God in 
Christ, made so by their faith, repentance, and bap- 
tism, coupled with the promise of forgiveness and 
the Holy Spirit, and by the apostles left wisely 
unvexed with the speculative and mysterious side of 
regeneration. Here are organization and enlargement 
proceeding under the rule of expediency, and no 
harm comes to the faith. Forever fact is better 
than theory; possession transcends speculation, and 
reality is the soul of religion. This is a book of real- 
ities. The death of Jesus is real; his resurrection is 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



25 



real; his Lordship and Messiahship are real; faith in 
him is real; repentance and baptism are real; the 
promise of forgiveness is real and it is realized, and 
the atonement is real, because there is a real recon- 
ciliation between the repentant child and the forgiv- 
ing Father. In this book there is a mighty march of 
realities; an invincible array of events; a conquering 
army of facts. The soul is at first led captive by 
them; then it delights in them; at last it rests in 
them, and finds that its rest is rest in the Father and 
in his Son Jesus Christ. 

The author begs the reader to accept this volume 
for what it purports to be, simply and humbly a 
series of meditations thrown into the form of essays, 
with greater haste and many more interruptions than 
were to his taste. In availing himself of the liberties 
of the essayist, the author has been enabled to avoid 
on the one hand the necessary routine of the com- 
mentator, and on the other the conventional limita- 
tions and exhortations of the sermonizer. 

The notes are selected with reference to their evi- 
dential value, the history and customs of the time, 
the constitution and life of the first church, and, 
above all, to the elucidation of the more difficult 
passages of the text. Where the well-known com- 
mentaries have been quoted, credit has been given. 
The plan imposes its own limitations, and it has 
required constant care and great resolution on the 
part of the author to keep within them. 



26 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



Courtesy demands that the works that have been 
most helpful to the author in the preparation of the 
Essays should be named. Prof. B. A. Hinsdale's 
compact and thoughtful little book, "The Jewish- 
Christian Church," gave decided bent to the author's 
thought while he was yet a college boy. Dr. Philip 
Schaff's "History of the Apostolic Church" has 
been used as an authority upon many points. Far- 
rar's "Life and Work of St. Paul," a work of won- 
derful eloquence and research, has been frequently 
helpful. Prof. W. M. Ramsay's recent critical work 
entitled "St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman 
Citizen" is indispensable to a thorough study of the 
last half of Acts. 

Should the humble studies here presented incite 
the reader to a closer, wiser and more reverent 
reading of this key-book of the New Testament, and 
should it bring him into a sweeter relationship to 
the Church of Christ, his present " Spirit-bearing 
body" in the world, its object will be attained and 
its mission fulfilled. 



I. 

THE FIRST SERMON AFTER THE ASCENSION 



"I say the pulpit (in the sober use 
Of its legitimate, peculiar powers) 
Must stand acknowledged while the world shall stand, 
The most important and effectual guard, 
Support and ornament of virtue's cause. 
There stands the messenger of truth. There stands 
The legate of the skies, his theme divine, 
His office sacred, his credentials clear; 
J3y him the violated law speaks out 
Its thunders, and by him, in strains as sweet 
As angels use, the Gospel whispers peace." 

—Cowper. 

28 



I. 



THE FIRST SERMON AFTER THE ASCENSION. 

"Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God 
hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and 
Christ."— Acts ii. 36. 

The second chapter of The Acts is vital. The 
Holy Spirit is in it. It throbs with passionate elo- 
quence. It has the thrill of a divine logic. It 
reaches a conclusion which immediately becomes a 
conviction. There ring through it the cries of thou- 
sands of penitent souls. It gives the divine response 
to these cries in its command to obedience and its 
promise of forgiveness. It heralds the hope of sal- 
vation to all that are afar off, and to the children's 
children of those who on that Pentecost day became 
the anointed of The Anointed. It holds the history 
of the beginning of the Church of Christ, and reveals 
to us in the apostolic steadfastness, and in the 
wholly fraternal relations of the first confessors, the 
power of the new, new story to regenerate men and 
transform society. 

There are few chapters in the Bible comparable to 
this in point of historic and spiritual values. In 
Genesis we are told of the creation of man ; here is 
the plan of his re-creation. In Exodus we still hear 
the thunders of Sinai giving forth a law under which 

29 



30 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



a mob of people, but yesterday out of slavery, is 
organized into an army and a nation ; here the church 
of the crucified but living and reigning Christ is 
born. In the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, Messianic 
prophecy reaches its loftiest strains and its sweetest 
pathos; in this chapter that prophecy becomes his- 
tory, and the One from whom we "hid as it were our 
faces," stands before us in resurrection regnancy, 
commanding us to look upon him in everlasting 
acknowledgment. The Apostle Paul's great chapter 
on the resurrection is anticipated by the Apostle 
Peter's daring, impulsive, irresistible testimony in 
this sermon. The thirteenth chapter of I. Corinth- 
ians teaches no higher form of love than is tacitly 
taught in this, the crucified One offering an abundant 
pardon to his murderers. The last chapter of Mat- 
thew, the last of Mark, and the last of Luke, con- 
tains, each, the risen Savior's last command, "Go, 
teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, 
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
have commanded you;" this contains the execution 
of that commission. It is in this chapter that we are 
come — "Unto Mount Sion, and to the city of the 
living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innu- 
merable company of angels, to the general assembly 
and church of the Firstborn, which are written in 
heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the 
spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the 
mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



31 



sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of 
Abel." 

It was in the year of our Lord 30, on a Sunday, on 
a May day, probably the 27th, that the miracle of 
Pentecost took place. Forty days after his resurrec- 
tion Jesus tarried visibly upon earth, giving to his 
chosen witnesses "many infallible proofs" of his res- 
urrection, and therefore of his Messiahship. There 
came the last solemn meeting with him, when with 
pitiful yearning for their ancient theocracy they 
asked of him this impertinent question: 44 Lord, 
wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to 
Israel?" This, then, was their final, political, un- 
spiritual prayer! It is a startling indication of the 
antagonism between their ideals and the Master's 
own of his Messianic kingdom. Their tuition under 
Jesus, his persistent refusal to wear any crown save 
one of thorns, his death, his resurrection, had failed 
to disabuse their minds of that ingrained nationalism 
which, cherished on the part of the Jews as a nation, 
was ultimately their ruin. Christ's answer to this ill- 
timed prayer was indirect. He knew that one crown- 
ing miracle still was needed to 44 guide them into all 
truth." Previously he had promised them the Holy 
Spirit, and had indicated the ofiice thereof in saying, 
44 He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, 
and shall show it unto you." His present answer in- 
cludes a command, a rebuke, and a reference to his 
former promise. 4 4 It is not for you to know the 
times or the seasons that the Father hath put in his 



32 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



own power. But ye shall receive power after that 
the Holy Spirit is corne upon you; and ye shall be 
witnesses unto rne both in Jerusalem, and in Judsea, 
and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the 
earth." These are his last words upon earth, and 
they are a Godlike answer to a very human question. 
Their poor plans of over-matching Caesar with "iron 
and blood" were limited to the "kingdom of 
Israel;" his matchless plan of over-matching all souls 
with truth and love found its boundaries only in "the 
uttermost parts of the earth." 

One lesson at least his disciples had learned : they 
could wait. They returned from the scene of the 
Ascension, and tarried in the city of Jerusalem "till 
they were endued with power from on high." 

On the day of Pentecost the Savior's promise was 
fulfilled. "There came from heaven a sound as of a 
rushing, mighty wind, and it filled all the house 
where they were sitting. And there appeared unto 
them cloven tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each 
of them, and they were all filled with the Holy 
Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues as the 
Spirit gave them utterance." This was their endue- 
ment. 

Guided, empowered thus, the Apostle Peter gave 
forth the greatest sermon ever preached. The names 
of the most notable preachers, and the immortal 
achievements of their "tongues of fire" are not 
wanting to memory when this assertion is made — 
Elijah, Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



33 



Ezra, John the Baptist, Paul, Chrysostom, Savon- 
arola, Luther, Whitefield, Edwards, Spurgeon, and 
many another, all of whose names thrill us more than 
those of kings and their counselors. There is one 
sermon never to be forgotten in such an estimate as 
we are attempting, and the name of the preacher of 
it is to be mentioned always reverently, and apart 
from any possible roll of names that are noblest 
among men. In its ethical and spiritual values the 
Sermon on the Mount is confessedly supreme. But 
its author does not present it as a completion. It is 
rather an inception. Not till Jesus bowed his head 
in death, saying, as he did so, "It is finished," was 
that sermon finished. In the Sermon on the Mount 
the death of Jesus is not foretold; there is no hint of 
his resurrection; the atonement is not taught. In 
these points it is surpassed by the sermon of Peter on 
that first Pentecost after the ascension. It was given 
to the apostle to complete what the Master had 
begun, or, rather, fully to declare the completions 
revealed in the living, dying, and rising of the Mas- 
ter. 44 Yerily, verily, I say unto you, He that believ- 
eth on me, the works that I do shall he do also ; and 
greater works than these shall he do, because I go 
unto my Father." ''Because I go unto my Father" 
— indicative of a finished work, a foundation in its 
completion, whereupon they, his disciples, were to 
build the house unto completion. 

Peter's sermon was, therefore, to all preceding 

preachers an impossibility. To the Savior him- 

3 



34 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



self it would have been an anachronism. Its repe- 
tition or its equal is likewise an impossibility to 
all succeeding preachers, for the occasion, the inspi- 
ration and the results of Pentecost can never be 
duplicated. 

Four factors are essential to a great sermon. In 
the first place there must be a great occasion. This 
Pentecost occasion had been in preparation through 
the whole of the nineteen Abrahamic centuries. 
God had this day in view when he said to Abraham, 
" In thee and in thy seed shall all the nations of the 
earth be blessed." Sinai, with all that it means, the 
theocracy and all of its history, the prophecy, poetry 
and tragedy of the Jews through thirty generations, 
the temple worship with its endless lineage of priests 
and high priests, with its altars and victims and sol- 
emn mimicry of types and shadows, the majestic roll 
of Hebrew prophets beginning with Moses and end- 
ing with John the Baptist, the whole of Hebrew 
history from the golden age of Solomon to the awful 
days of the Maccabees, — all, all is but preparation 
for the completions that were preached on Pentecost. 
John the Baptist is but the last of the many fore- 
runners of Christ. His cry, " Kepent, for the king- 
dom of heaven is at hand," is the summary and 
conclusion, terse and terrible, in the very presence 
of the Christ, of the law and the prophets from 
Moses to Malachi. Standing as the representative 
not alone of Elijah, but of Isaiah as well, and of 
Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Daniel, and the rest 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



35 



of Christ's great-souled forerunners, standing as the 
last old covenant prophet and the best product 
of a mighty ancestry, "the greatest among them 
that are born of women," he introduces the Christ, 
saying, "Behold the lamb of God that taketh away 
the sin of the world." This man and all that for 
which he stands in his incompleteness — "the least in 
the kingdom of heaven is greater than he " — is like- 
wise a factor in the preparation for the completions 
of Pentecost. 

But, as already intimated, Christ himself is the 
essential and the immediate preparation for that 
event. The sermon goes back and looks into the 
face of prophecy, but only that it may find Christ 
there. The sixteenth Psalm is quoted, and now for 
the first time the veil is lifted from it, for only in the 
light of the crucifixion and the resurrection can the 
face of Moses, and of David, be unveiled. "Men 
and brethren, let me freely speak to you of the patri- 
arch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his 
sepulcher is with us unto this day. Therefore being 
a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an 
oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according 
to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his 
throne; he seeing this before, spake of the resurrec- 
tion of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell (the 
world of the dead) neither his flesh did see cor- 
ruption." 

Christ in prophecy meets Christ in fact. " Ye men 
of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a 



36 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



man approved of God among you by miracles and 
wonders and signs, which God did by him in the 
midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: him, being 
delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowl- 
edge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands 
have crucified and slain: whom God hath raised up, 
having loosed the pains of death, because it was not 
possible that he should be holden of it." The life of 
Jesus, therefore, and all that was unique in it; his 
teaching, his miracles, his oneness with himself in 
word and deed, his death, being at once the necessary 
sequel and climax to his life, and his resurrection 
together with the infallible proofs of it, all, all is in 
the line of preparation for the Pentecost occasion. 
If the crucifixion may be likened to a mighty storm- 
cloud that passed in fury, raining divine blood 
upon the earth, the resurrection may be similarly 
likened to the indescribable glory of the sun, when, 
as though he had conquered the storm, he turns to 
paint upon its darkest breast his brightest bow of 
promised peace. The terror and the glory of the 
crucifixion and the resurrection were fresh in the 
minds of myriads of the people of Judaea, and their 
capital city had not yet recovered from the astonish- 
ment of the empty sepulcher when the day of Pente- 
cost had fully come. The thousands of pilgrims 
who gathered from many lands to keep the feast in 
the Holy City could not have been ignorant of what 
had happened, for so early as the day of the resur- 
rection it was the topic of conversation by the way- 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



37 



side, and whoever had not heard it was immediately 
taken for a stranger. " These things were not done 
in a corner." 

In addition to all this, and the last circumstance to 
be named as contributing to the occasion, was the 
harvest feast itself, the second of the three great festi- 
vals of the Jews. Worshiping strangers were present 
from many lands, and the city and the temple courts 
were thronged with devout and expectant crowds. 
Did they remember the young Galilean who had 
twice cleansed the tempi e of its company of monopo- 
listic thieves, scourging them, and overthrowing their 
money tables? Did they recall the terrible energy 
of his words, and his look of divine indignation as he 
said, "Take these things hence; make not my Fath- 
er's house a house of merchandise? " Did these 
recollections connect themselves with others fresher 
in mind of the dreadful noonday darkness that boded 
no good of his crucifixion, of the earthquake and the 
rending of the temple veil, and above all of his resur- 
rection, quiet, divine, and terrible defiance as it was 
of Jewish malignity and Roman power? Did throngs 
of curious awe-struck people go now to gaze in at the 
empty sepulcher, and now upon the torn veil of the 
temple? Had the story of his appearances and dis- 
appearances gotten abroad, and were there hopes 
and fears on the part of friends and foes? Had he 
not promised that he would come again, and had he 
not threatened that of their temple not one stone 
should be left upon another that should not be 



38 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



thrown down? One may not unwisely guess that 
there were forebodings of evil in many a heart, that 
there was expectancy on the part of all, and that 
when his disciples began to speak miraculously 
amidst the throngs in the temple courts there was 
intense excitement. It was a great occasion for 
which the history of centuries, and the tragedy of 
history, which' to the worshipers there was the 
tragedy of the season, had prepared the way. Such 
preparations, such conditions, such an occasion can 
never return. All is unique. 

The second essential to a great sermon is a great 
preacher. No man preaches taller than he is. It is 
not the office of the Holy Spirit to make suddenly 
and for the occasion giants of pigmies, sages of 
clowns, prophets of platform jobbers, or heroes of 
political cravens. From the pulpit wag, the sen- 
sationalist of the hour, the Cheap-John comic draw- 
ing card, you may expect smirks, jokes, the puns of 
last year's almanac, the slang of the street, the mere 
plausible tall-talk for which the multitudes having 
itching ears make constant demands. Our colleges 
and theological seminaries would perform a valuable 
service to mankind if they would make a business, 
metaphorically speaking, of strangling pulpit wags in 
embryo. The prostitution of the pulpit is not the 
least of the sins for which the trifler in divine things, 
the small dogmatic Doctor of Divinity, the evan- 
gelistic buffoon, and the mere political huckster of 
denominational eccentricities, must sometime answer. 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



39 



But the pulpit and the sermon, as looked upon by 
the great and serious soul, present no opportunity 
for trifling. The Apostle Paul said, " We are the 
savour of death unto death, and of life unto life. 
Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not 
as many who corrupt the word of God, but as of sin- 
cerity, as of God, in the sight of God speak we in 
Christ." Chrysostom, already in his youth an accom- 
plished rhetorician, rushed away and spent six years 
in lonesome study and devout meditation before he 
consented to enter the pulpit. Savonarola kindled 
his soul from the fires of Old Testament prophecy, 
and from his pulpit kindled the fires of revolution in 
Florence. With him preaching was so serious a busi- 
ness that when the papal agents sought to purchase 
his conscience with a cardinal's cap he merely said 
that he expected a cap some day red with his own 
blood. Jonathan Edwards " lived, an absorbed spirit, 
in the study. . . . He was a man of faith and 
prayer, a man who handled the things that are unseen 
as things really seen and felt; a mind shining through 
a beautiful face, . . . terribly in earnest, with a 
dreadful sense that sin was sin, Satan, Satan, and 
Christ, Christ." The man, the real man in the 
pulpit does realize that, 

"There he stands 
The legate of the skies, his theme divine, 
His office sacred, his credentials clear. 
By him, the violated law speaks out its thunders, 
And by him, in strains as sweet as angels use, 
The Gospel whispers peace." 



40 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



Suited to the greatness of the Pentecost occasion 
there was a great preacher. The Apostle Peter was 
no longer "an ignorant fisherman," if he ever was 
that. He had had three years or more under this 
world's Master of masters, he had had spiritual 
experiences that were worth infinitely more to him 
than all the possible curricula of legalistic and rab- 
binical lore of his time, and above all else he was 
greatly and especially inspired for this day's work. 
Three years with Jesus, going about and doing good, 
hearing, seeing, practicing, puzzled, asking questions, 
grandly confessing Christ, and, from his standpoint 
as grandly rebuking him; as grandly also, still from 
his standpoint, out of crushed hopes and a broken 
heart, denying him; and after all compelled to read 
the meaning of these experiences in the light of the 
resurrection, and for that purpose endued with and 
guided by the Holy Spirit — this is the great man, 
greatly schooled, absolutely subdued, totally regen- 
erated, positively inspired, who stands up match- 
lessly equipped for this matchless occasion. 

The third essential to a great sermon is a great 
theme. The Spirit does not go forth with the sound 
as of a rushing, mighty wind, nor do the cloven 
tongues of fire appear for the declaration of trifles. 
Platitudes and attitudes are not the secret of heart- 
moving power. The meanness of the theme belittles 
the man and his pulpit; the grandeur of the theme 
exalts him and it. Out of the presumable science, 
philosophy, or politics of the day, there may come 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



41 



forth any amount of pulpit oration, no doubt, rang- 
ing all the way from twaddle to gabble, and from 
gabble to fustian, and the twaddle and gabble and 
fustian may, indeed, have some seasoning of the Gos- 
pel in high, homeopathic solution; but are we to call 
this preaching? Jesus preached about so slight a 
thing as a lost coin, and a lost sheep, but his real 
theme was a lost soul, and out of that theme there 
grew the pearl of his parables, the one doubly and 
properly named "The Parable of the Prodigal Son," 
"The Parable of Fatherly Love." The themes of 
Jesus are simple, but they are sublime ere he leaves 
them, for into the commonplaces of earth he pours 
the spiritual content of faith and hope and love, of 
repentance and forgiveness and restoration, and he 
concludes by setting the whole of it in the perspec- 
tive of endless days. 

How can one fitly speak of the Apostle Peter's 
Pentecost theme! It is the theme of mankind, 
of the angels, and of the ages. It is the theme of 
prophecy preceding, and history succeeding, a certain 
date. Once it was the theme of types and shadows 
embodied in stately forms of ritualistic worship; as 
the shadows give place to substance, their theme be- 
comes the exclusive one of apostles, martyrs, heroes 
and reformers, whose names are without number. It 
is still the theme, and shall ever be, of all preachers 
that are preachers, of all poets that are poets, of all 
martyrs and prophets and reformers and philoso- 



42 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



phers who are genuinely so, and not the mere effigies 
of their respective classes. 

When Whittier would overreach himself in the 
production of his finest ode, he can choose no theme 
but the Christ, 44 Our Master." In his "In Merao- 
riam," Tennyson's friend, whom he tenderly remem- 
bers and fondly hopes again to meet, is less his theme 
than the Christ, through faith in whom he lifts up 
his hopes in poetic forms, till the poem becomes an 
anthem and a sermon, beginning with 

" Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
By faith and faith alone embrace, 
Believing where we cannot prove." 

And closing with 

"That God which ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far off, divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." 

Our English epic, "Paradise Lost," cannot so 
much as get itself introduced by its great author 
without the most fervent expression of recovery 
through Christ. Disobedience, death, woe, loss of 
Eden, are only — 

"Till one greater Man 
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat." 

It has been said there is no poetry without God. 
Since "God was in Christ reconciling the world to 
himself," let it be said quite as positively, there is no 
poetry without Christ. And if no poetry, then also 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



43 



no philosophy, no history, no highest life of any sort. 

Henry B. Smith, formerly of Union Theological 
Seminary, says, "God in Christ, reconciling the 
world unto himself, is the burden of the Bible, and it 
is also the burden of history." In this connection he 
quotes the great Swiss historian, John Von Miiller, 
who gives the results of his life-long labors, extracted 
from 1,733 authors, in the striking confession, that 
''Christ is the key to the history of the world. Not 
only does all harmonize with the mission of Christ, 
all is subordinated to it. When I saw this," he 
continues, " it was to me as wonderful and surprising 
as the light which Paul saw on the way to Damascus, 
the fulfillment of all hopes, the completion of all 
philosophy, the key to all the apparent contradictions 
of the physical and moral world; here is life and im- 
mortality. I marvel not at miracles; a far greater 
miracle has been reserved for our times, the spectacle 
of the connection of all human events in the estab- 
lishment and preservation of the doctrine of Christ." 

Christ was the Apostle Peter's theme on the day of 
Pentecost. Christ, of whom Herder has said, "He is 
the realized ideal of humanity;" whom Carlyle calls, 
"Our divinest symbol, a symbol of quite perennial, 
infinite character;" of whom Dorner says, "He is the 
perfect revelation of God, and at the same time the 
perfection of humanity;" of whose life Schaff says, 
"It is the moral miracle of history;" — Christ, at 
whose feet, inerrant, and wounded, as at the feet of 



44 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



the Master supreme, the greatest masters of earth 
unanimously, reverently bow. 

Note the argument of the sermon. Jesus of 
Nazareth, a man approved of God by miracles and 
wonders and signs; delivered by the counsel of God, 
and slain by wicked hands; by God raised from the 
dead, exalted, seated at the right hand of the Most 
High till his foes are his footstool; and, finally, giver 
of the Holy Spirit, — these are the mighty passages 
of directly inspired, impetuous, daring, apostolic tes- 
timony. 

The climax, the conclusion, the effective, heart- 
piercing appeal of the sermon, are all reached in the 
words that are chosen to stand as the caption of 
this essay: "Therefore, let all the house of Israel 
know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, 
whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." 
There is no other theme, there is no other conclu- 
sion for the pulpit. The platform, the forum, the 
academic chair, may deal with inferior themes, and 
reach other, minor conclusions, but not the pulpit. 
The moment the pulpit undertakes to present or 
represent any other than Christ, or to enforce truth 
other than and inferior to this, namely, that God 
hath made him Lord and Christ, that moment the 
pulpit ceases to be the pulpit, and becomes by neces- 
sity something other, but not better. Forever and 
forever the Christological preacher, and therefore 
also the evangelistic one, must find in this sermon 
his model. Surely it is with accurate, homiletic in- 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



45 



stinct that Joseph Parker has said, "As a matter of 
fact, the Apostle Peter preached the only sermon 
that any Christian minister is ever at liberty to 
preach. This discourse of Peter's is not nineteen 
centuries old. This is the model sermon. This is 
the evangelistic doctrine." 

The occasion was unique. To match it the 
preacher was especially chosen, peculiarly trained, 
divinely-inspired. His theme was Christ. One thing 
remains to make the sermon great; its effect was 
great. 

Three thousand were "pricked in the heart;" 
three thousand became inquirers, and were told 
explicitly what to do'; they did it exactly. They 
received the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit, 
and in their rebirth the church of Christ was born. 
Significant beyond the fact that three thousand souls 
were turned to Christ is the question that they asked, 
and the answer it received. They have passed away 
from earth, but their question abides ; it is the soul- 
cry of humanity, "Men and brethren, what shall we 
do?" And the answer to it, given under such cir- 
cumstances, and with such sanctions, must be an 
abiding answer. If the pulpit is unique, if its theme 
is unique, if its peculiar province is to call forth this 
question, then shall not its answer be likewise 
unique, and shall it not be explicit, and forever 
imperative? "Repent and be baptized, every one of 
you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of 
sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 



46 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



Spirit.'' Repentance! Baptism! Remission! the 
Holy Spirit! — here is the atonement! 44 God was in 
Christ reconciling the world to himself," and this 
is the way reconciliation began on that first Pen- 
tecost after the ascension, in the persons of thrice 
a thousand souls. 

This sermon is great in that it completely presents 
the Gospel in its completion. 

The manner of it is a model, the Apostle Peter 
having been greatly schooled and greatly inspired 
for its delivery. 

It is great in its exclusion of things irrelevant. 
Not one word is said about restoring the kingdom 
again to Israel, though this was the last thought 
uppermost with the disciples at the moment of 
Christ's ascension. 

It is Christological rather than theological, and 
inductive rather than deductive. In a very great 
manner it is barren, therefore, of metaphysics, the- 
ories, dogmas, and the general guess-work impu- 
dently conceived and dogmatically enforced of all 
merely rationalistic, because merely syllogistic, and 
therefore merely logic-chopped theology. 

It is great in presenting Christ as he presented 
himself, ''Approved of God by miracles and signs 
and wonders which God did by him; " crucified, 
buried, risen, exalted, expectant, regnant, claiming 
the world at the price of his blood. 

It is great in moving the hearts of the people as 
fields of grain are shaken by the wind. At once to 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



47 



enlighten the mind, to touch the heart, and to bend 
man's stubborn will before God's will till cries for 
mercy are forthcoming is the most majestic effect of 
speech. 

It is great in its revelation of the new way of 
access to God "through the veil, that is to say, his 
flesh," commanding that "the heart be sprinkled 
from an evil conscience, and the body washed with 
pure water." 

It is great in its promise of the Holy Spirit, and in 
its extension of that promise to " all that are afar 
off." It is the greatest sermon ever preached. 



II. 

THE FIRST CHURCH 



"Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he 
might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the 
word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not 
having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing ; but that it should be 
holy and without blemish."— Eph. v. 25-27. 

"The church is no other than the outward, visible representation 
of the inward communion of believers with the Redeemer and with 
one ano ther. ' ' — Neander. 

"Over against the divisions of race and continent the Church 
raises still its witness to the possibility of a universal brotherhood : 
over against despair and dispersion it speaks of faith and the unity 
of knowledge; over against pessimism it lifts up a perpetual 
Eucharist."— Rev. W. Lock. 

50 



II. 



THE FIRST CHURCH. 

"Then they that gladly received his word were baptized; and the 
same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. ' ' 
— Acts ii. 41. 

The word received was the conclusion of the Apos- 
tle Peter's sermon and his answer to the inquirers' 
question. This was the conclusion: "Let all the 
house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made 
that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord 
and Christ." This was the answer to the question: 
"Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the 
name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and 
ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." This 
conclusion and this answer were respectively creed 
and charter of the new-born church. They 44 received 
his word;" that is, they accepted the creed and com- 
plied with the conditions of the charter. A great 
change had come over them in the few weeks since 
they clamored for the crucifixion of Jesus, and 
hooted around his cross, and wagged their heads in 
mockery while he expired in majesty. The miracle 
of the tongues and the power of the Holy Spirit 
bringing proof of the resurrection of Jesus, had 
broken up the fountains of the great deep in the 
hearts of the hitherto impenitent multitudes, and 



52 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



many doors flew open now where the Master himself 
had stood knocking in vain. They 4 'were baptized;" 
that is, they acknowledged their faith in Christ 
openly; they submitted, in a figure, to die with him 
that they might rise with him; they took the step 
that severed them from the old, and brought them 
into new relations with God. In baptism they 
reached the culmination of conversion, for conver- 
sion is immersion — the immersion of the mind in the 
mind of Jesus ; of the heart in the love of Jesus ; of 
the will in the purpose of Jesus; of the body in 
water in the name of Jesus, coupled with the name 
of his Father and ours, and with the name of the 
Holy Spirit, his and ours. So the three thousand 
"were added." It is the Pentecostal plan of the 
addition, and therefore also of the multiplication of 
believers. 

Not a word is said about any further basis of mem- 
bership than this. Whatever brought a soul into 
Christ brought him also into the church of Christ, 
and the basis of the union of souls in the Head of 
the church was by necessity the basis of their union 
and communion in the body of it. Thus the question 
of Christian union is reduced to a mathematical ex- 
actness. The last word to be said on the subject is 
this: union with Christ is union with his church, and 
those who are members of his body are therefore 
"members one of another." We have made many 
sad and foolish schisms, but the saddest and fool- 
ishest is that between Christ himself and his own 



STUDIES TN ACTS 



53 



body. We cannot, somehow, seem to understand 
that the church is his, and that all who are members 
of him are by necessity members of it. Our difficul- 
ties are of our own creation. We have failed to 
understand the primary union of the Savior with the 
saved, of the Lord with his domain, of the Head with 
his own proper body, speaking after the fashion of 
the Apostle Paul; and having gone wrong in this 
primary matter, we have been going wrong by 
sequence in all secondary ones. Foolishly and with 
measurable impudence we have dragged in our creeds 
and polities; we demand places for our clashing 
isms, and recognition of our pet notions; we talk of 
our denominations, and propose federation of them, 
as though they were the things to be united ; on the 
contrary, the things to be united are Christ and our- 
selves. When you and I are united with Christ, and 
consequently with one another, we are then to go 
anywhere in this world and claim our place at any 
communion table that is his. In defiance of dogmas 
and theologies and theometries and rituals and poli- 
ties and isms and schisms and ecclesiasticisms and 
hierarchies, high or low, I have a right to the bread 
wherever it is broken in his name, and to the wine 
wherever it speaks to me of his blood — I have a right 
to it if I am his. We need to reassert the primal, 
Pentecostal "addition" of believers to believers. 
That mode of "addition" is the solution of the 
whole problem, and its proper and practical assertion 
would forever forestall such talk as is too common 



54 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



and commonplace about the variously proposed bases 
of union, such as "The Apostles' Creed," noble, and 
true, perhaps, and hoary with age, though the apos- 
tles themselves never dreamed of it; and "The 
Quadrilateral," proposed as a basis of union by such 
as, claiming the Apostolic Succession, have evidently 
lost the apostolic simplicity; and the Evangelical 
Alliance creed, and any number of things except the 
one, Pentecostal, right thing. If we knew it, all 
Christians are already united in Christ just as the 
Pentecost thousands were; they all claim the 
same eternal Father, they are all journeying to the 
same heaven ; they have only to drop their extrane- 
ous, and superfluous, and mischievous peculiarities, 
and bravely acknowledge their existing oneness. 

If the first church was by birth a unit, by its edu- 
cation it continued its coherence. " They continued 
steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, 
and in the breaking of bread and in prayers." The 
teaching and fellowship of the apostles, prayer and 
the eucharist, are the divinely-appointed means of 
ordination and of co-ordination in the church of 
Christ. The writer of Acts leaves the phrase " apos- 
tles' teaching" unqualified, seemingly suggesting 
that their doctrines were so well known as to need 
no iteration. And we do know, if we stop to think 
about it, precisely what they taught. The Pentecost 
sermon is a summary of it; the Gospels are an 
enlargement of it; the epistles are the completion 
of it. Day after day they must have repeated the 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



55 



story of Christ's resurrection, and from that they 
must have gone back in memory to dwell upon his 
life, full of childlike simplicity and more than man- 
like perplexity, and clothed at once in warp and 
woof of humility and majesty. They must have had 
occasion, as all pastors have, to enforce his style of 
forbearance and forgiveness, many and many a time, 
upon his fledgling followers; often they must have 
described with accuracy and with the enthusiasm of 
a vivid remembrance his walk upon the waves when 
tossed by the night winds, his transfiguration, sun- 
like pre-robing of glory for a season's communion 
with glorified ones, and his strange semi-earthly, 
semi-heavenly appearances after his resurrection; 
and very frequently they must have turned to their 
Scriptures and to the temple- worship proceeding 
daily around them, to find many a prophetic promise 
and sacramental type of him. The apostles were 
not theologians; they had not so degenerated. 
Christological ! Their teachings were wholly that. 
The Holy Spirit was not given to make theologians 
of them, but to glorify Christ through them. They 
had been trained by Jesus to trust God as children 
trust a Father, and to believe in himself as both 
Lord and Christ, and to go about doing good. 
They were entirely and beneficently innocent of all 
speculations about Monarchianism, and Eutychian- 
ism, and Monophysitism, and Monothelitism, 
and Supra-lapsarianism, and Sublapsarianism, and 
the Kenosis, and the Krypsis, and the genus ideo- 



56 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



maticum, and the genus apotelesmaticum, and the 
genus majestaticum, and of transubstantiation, and 
consubstantiation, and eternal generation, and 
eternal procession, and co-substantiality and tri-per- 
sonality, and the voliprcesentia, or the multivoli- 
prcesentia of Christ as opposed to the absolute 
ubiquity of his humanity from his very infancy — 
O thank Grod ! The apostles were beneficently inno- 
cent of all this. They were too reverent and prac- 
tical to indulge in such meddlesome and useless 
speculations. Not until the ill-starred times when 
there came an alliance between the Christian faith 
on the one hand and Greek speculation and Roman 
dogmatism on the other, and not till men lost their 
reverence in the heat and impetuosity of their pur- 
suit of partisan ends was it possible to indulge in the 
"profane and vain babblings" that encompass the 
whole history of theology. The members of the first 
church, "continuing steadfastly in the doctrine of 
the apostles," lived in the enjoyment of a loving loy- 
alty to the personal Lordship of Jesus, and since 
Jesus was a brother and a friend and a reality to 
them they would have speculated quite as readily 
about one another as about him. Even John, the 
most mystical of all the twelve, kept through the 
whole of his life to a reverently simple and absolute 
declaration of that "Word," which he had seen, 
which he had looked upon, which he had heard, and 
his hands had handled (I. John i. 1-3). From that 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



57 



he proceeded immediately to practical matters, for- 
bidding speculative ones. 

It is needful to note in a word that the first church 
enjoyed the fellowship of the apostles together with 
their teaching. Forever and forever the teachers 
whom Christ appoints are to be the " fellows," the 
friends and brothers of those whom they are ap- 
pointed to teach. The lords over the heritage, with 
their secular scepters and high miters, have ceased to 
be apostolical, since with albs and crosiers and palli- 
ums and red caps and clerical titles, and every pos- 
sible distinction between themselves and "the laity," 
from the peculiar cut of a coat to the supercilious 
assumption of infallibility, such teachers have sep- 
arated themselves from their disciples. The fellow- 
ship, the friendship, the environment of the teacher 
is essential to the completest efficacy of his teaching. 
Hence Jesus lived among his disciples. Hence the 
apostles lived among the members of the first church. 
Hence the true pastor must live among his people, 
and the ringing of door-bells is quite as essential as 
the announcing of texts. From the fellowship of 
the apostles, and the fellowship of all true teach- 
ers and pastors, out through the medium of the 
church there is to go forth at last that fellowship, 
which, breaking down all caste, is to compass the 
whole earth, — 

"When each shall find his own in all men's good, 
And all men dwell in noble brotherhood," 

and when each man's title to reverence shall pro- 



* 



58 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



ceed from his ministerial rather than his magisterial 
service to men. 

The first church continued steadfastly in the break- 
ing of bread and in prayers. According to the forty- 
sixth verse of the chapter this "breaking of bread" 
was a daily service. It was modeled after Christ's 
last supper with his disciples, which was a full meal; 
after that the bread and the wine were passed, 
blessed with his blessing, and set apart forever to 
the remembrance of him. Gradually changes came 
both in the time and the manner of the observance 
of this communal supper and communion service. In 
the twentieth chapter of Acts we already have indica- 
tions that the daily feast had in the Gentile church at 
Troas passed overiuto a weekly one, and that the first 
day of the week was the statedly appointed time for it. 
But that the communal supper, or love-feast, as it 
has been called, and the communion service were 
separated during the days of the apostles is not quite 
clear. There are iudications of such separation in 
the Apostle Paul's instructions to the Corinthian 
church, for in this church the supper fell under 
shameful abuses, 4i one being hungry and another 
drunken." The apostle thereupon rebuked them, 
saying, "What? Have you not houses to eat and 
drink in? Or despise ye the church of God, and 
shame them that are poor?" Then, following this 
suggestion that they should eat and drink in their 
own houses, that i>, that they should take their own 
suppers in their own houses, he emphasizes in the 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



59 



most solemn way the Lord's supper as commemo- 
rative of the Lord's death. This much is certain: 
the daily communal supper was never commanded 
by Christ, and from its nature it could not become 
permanent in the church. The communion service, 
on the other hand, was commanded, and its nature 
bespeaks its permanence. 

Before Jesus died, in anticipation of his death, he 
broke the bread and blessed it, and he blessed the 
wine, and gave both to his disciples as age-long, 
sacred symbols of himself, afflicted though he was, 
and despised, and rejected of men, yet devoted to 
men, and already in intent as truly dead as when he 
died. Oh, the love, the courage, the dauntlessness of 
Jesus! With a present tense preceding his death he 
calmly gave to his disciples and to the world a 
reminder of something that was yet to be. " This is 
my body which is broken for you!" 44 This cup is 
the New Testament in my blood!" He is a Lamb 
"slain from the foundation of the world." In in- 
tent, and no less in fact, the atonement runs through 
the whole of his life, of which his death is but 
the climax, of which his resurrection is the seal, it 
being his second and final transfiguration never to 
be followed by humiliation. The death of Jesus 
is not an accident. It is an integral part of his life. 
To remember his death is to remember him, and his 
atoning death is his atoning self, given, devoted, in 
anticipation slain, slain from the first, yet in resur- 
rection living forever. 



60 



STUDIES m ACTS 



In their direct way of looking at it, the Pentecost 
Christians could never have dreamed of anything so 
shocking as the Mediaeval doctrine of "blood atone- 
ment." To them the death-tragedy of Jesus was the 
culmination of his life-tragedy, the two being bound 
together as antecedent and consequent, thus forming 
one mighty movement of the one transcendent life, 
the whole acknowledged of God and sealed by him in 
the resurrection of his Son from the dead. And 
where is the efficacy of this mingled tragedy of life 
and death and resurrection? On Pentecost it pricked 
the thousands in their hearts; they cried in peni- 
tence and baptism unto God, and were forgiven, and 
that was their atonement. After repentance and for- 
giveness, to talk about a divine justice or a divine 
law still to be "satisfied," is ill-timed and illogical. 
A father who has looked upon the face of his penitent 
child and has forgiven him, is already satisfied, and 
more sweetly so than by any possible other "pay- 
ment." To the first Christian church, therefore, 
the communion service must have been a weekly 
reminder of Christ and all that the apostles were con- 
tinually telling about him; and of that pricking in 
the heart which brought them to repentance and 
baptism; and of the Holy Spirit's blessed promise 
thereupon of the forgiveness of their sins. In the 
light of this chapter the atonement, the "unio 
mystica" well-nigh ceases to be mystical; theology 
becomes Christology, and the Lord's supper becomes 
a Father's feast, with the Elder Brother and all the 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



61 



children at table, breaking bread from one loaf, par- 
taking of wine from a common cup, remembering the 
one body and the one blood of the one Greatest 
Brother, and not forgetting that 44 God hath made of 
one blood (is it not the same?) all the nations of the 
earth." The communion service thus, when prop- 
erly seen from the standpoint of the first church, will 
set our eyes looking upon the simplest, sweetest sort, 
not of doctrinal but of practical and actual atone- 
ment, and it will set them looking also both Godward 
and manward in heaven-high and world-wide ways. 

However, this question should not be studied in 
the spirit of triumphant rationalism, but in caution 
and reverence, since there are positions that easily 
offer themselves to a hasty logic based upon the 
rough and ready dealings of man with man, rather 
than upon the revealed dealings of God with man. 

Though the first church must be exonerated from 
the Romish doctrine of the vicarious atonement, it 
must nevertheless have been influenced in its views 
of the death of Jesus by the sacrificial system upon 
which, through all their generations, the Jews had 
been trained to look with utmost reverence. The 
standpoint of John the Baptist is evidently that 
also of John the Apostle, and is therefore indicative 
of that of the apostolic church: "Behold the Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sin of the world." 
John Ruskin, revolting with all of his characteris- 
tically seer-like soul from much that is taught in 
theology, has, nevertheless, with accurate, spiritual 



62 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



and scriptural insight, avoided an extreme that has 
proved too great an allurement to many a smaller 
soul, namely, that the death of Jesus has no other 
than ethical and evidential values for us. The fol- 
lowing paragraph is from his ''The Art of England," 
and is so fair a comment upon many a passage in the 
New Testament as to deserve a place in every such 
discussion as this: 

"None of you who have the least acquaintance with 
the general tenor of my own teaching will suspect in 
me any bias toward the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice 
as it is taught by the modern evangelical preacher. 
But the great mystery of the idea of sacrifice itself, 
which has been manifested as one united and solemn 
instinct by all thoughtful and affectionate races since 
the wide world became peopled, is founded upon the 
secret truth of benevolent energy which all men who 
have tried to gain it have learned — that you cannot 
save men from death but by facing it for them, ,nor 
from sin but by resisting it for them. It is, on the 
contrary, the favorite and the worst falsehood of 
modern infidel morality, that you serve your fellow- 
creatures best by getting a percentage out of their 
pockets, and will best provide for starving multitudes 
by regaling yourselves. Some day or other — proba- 
bly now very soon — too probably by heavy afflictions 
of the state, we shall be taught that it is not so; and 
that all the true good and glory, even of this world — 
not to speak of any that is to come — must be bought 
still, as it always has been, with our toil and with our 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



63 



tears. That is the final doctrine, the inevitable one, 
not of Christianity only, but of all heroic faith and 
heroic being; and the first trial question of a true 
soul must be — Have I a religion, have I a country, 
have I a love, that I am ready to die for?" 

The first church was a praying church. It was 
ushered in by the way of prayer, for in that upper 
room previous to the day of Pentecost "they all con- 
tinued with one accord in prayer and supplication." 
It was nourished by prayer, and within the apostolic 
environment it breathed the atmosphere of prayer. 
The church of Christ is unique in that it is a praying 
brotherhood. There are secret fraternities, and com- 
mercial fraternities, and fighting fraternities, but the 
secret and the wealth and the weapons of the church 
are in prayer. The effectual, fervent prayers of the 
first church were not without startling efiicacy. 
When they communed they prayed; when they or- 
dained deacons they prayed; when they were perse- 
cuted they prayed; if they died, they died praying, 
and saying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." When 
Peter was in prison they prayed daily for him, and 
even while they prayed he stood, to their surprise, 
knocking at their gate. For the angel of the Lord 
answered their prayers, taking him from the sleeping 
soldiers, and leading him forth through prison doors 
and iron gates that "opened of their own accord." 
A prayerless Christian is an anomaly, and likewise a 
prayerless church. Prayer belongs among the "all 
things " that Jesus commanded to be taught. " Jesus 



64 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



himself," says Mozoomdar, "lived and died in 
prayer." "They saw prayer when they beheld Jesus 
praying, for as he prayed the fashion of his counte- 
nance was altered." 

"There is more wisdom in a whispered prayer 
Than in the ancient lore of all the schools ; 
The soul upon its knees holds God by the hand." 

The laws of prayer may be traced in the prayers of 
the first church. They who continued in prayer were 
all believers in Christ as their Savior, and therefore 
in God as their Father; such belief is the first law of 
Christian prayer. 

They were all obedient, having done punctually and 
precisely what they were commanded to do; this is 
the second law of Christian prayer. 

Unarmed and in the midst of enemies who would 
soon let loose the fires of persecution upon them, 
they were helpless without God, and therefore de- 
pendent upon him; this is the third law of Christian 
prayer. 

As shown in their community of distribution, these 
Christians loved, and love is a sacred condition of 
prayer. 

"He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small ; 
For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all." 

"Prayer is the highest form of speech that human 
lips can try." 

"A man holds himself at his best when he prays." 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



65 



Prayer is the other half of work. It is the prov- 
ince of the Christian to work and pray. 

The first church "had all things common, and sold 
their possessions and goods, and parted them to all 
men as every man had need." This was a voluntary, 
not a compulsory communism. The right to their 
own property both before and after the sale of it was 
recognized by the Apostle Peter iu the case of Ana- 
nias and Sapphira. "Whiles it remained was it not 
thine own? And after it was sold was it not in thine 
own power?" These people were condemned for 
their attempted deception, not for their retention of 
a portion of their goods. Doubtless many of the 
members of this church retained their own houses, as 
was the case with Mary the mother of John, in whose 
house they gathered to pray for Peter when he was in 
prison, Acts xii. 12. The common store did not 
enrich the apostles, for they said to the lame man at 
the gate of the temple, " Silver and gold have we 
none." Yet, that the goods were " laid at the apos- 
tles' feet" indicates that they had the entire control 
of them. Their use of them therefore must have 
been strictly for the good of the community, and not 
at all for personal gain. 

The dangers to which the first Christians were sub- 
jected, their common faith and love, and their expec- 
tation of the early reappearance of Jesus, led many 
of them to this voluntary surrender of their goods. 

After all, the communism was in distribution rather 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



than in possession. The first church had no claim 
on the goods of its members, it was simply a store- 
house for their free-will offerings. There was no 
confiscation on the part of the church, and no obliga- 
tion on the part of the members except the con- 
straint of their enthusiasm and love. But in distri- 
bution there was the strictest obligation resting on 
the apostles to see that every one was supplied 
according to his needs. As the church grew the work 
became too great for them, and hence the appoint- 
ment of the seven deacons to whom the service of 
the "tables" was committed, the apostles giving 
themselves to the preaching of the word. 

Such a communism of the storing and distribution 
of voluntary gifts is not traceable in any of the Gen- 
tile churches, and it seems to have led ultimately to 
the poverty and dependence of many in the first 
church, for in later years the Apostle Paul went 
about among the Gentile Christians in Macedonia and 
Achaia soliciting help for the "poor saints which 
were in Jerusalem." 

In close and profitable study the accidental must be 
distinguished from the essential. In the first church 
the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, the 
breaking of bread, and the prayers, were essential 
and permanent. The canceling of any of these fac- 
tors would cripple any church. But the communism 
was accidental and transient, and passed away with 
the transient conditions from which it arose. The 
essential and abiding principle underneath this outer 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



67 



communism was the spirit of brotherly kindness, 
under the constraint of which none of them said that 
aught of the things which he possessed was his own. 
True stewards of God's gifts, they held their prop- 
erty at the service of his church. This was the abid- 
ing, social soul of Christianity, and it was manifested 
as truly by the churches of Macedonia and Achaia in 
their gifts to the "poor saints" far away, and of 
another and erstwhile hateful lineage, as by those 
who in Jerusalem sold their lands and laid the prices 
at the apostles' feet. Out of this, the abiding social 
soul of Christianity, there has gone forth through all 
the centuries that bear the name of our Lord the 
innumerable benefactions of his church. Schools, 
hospitals, asylums, churches, missions and martyr- 
doms have sprung from it; and the most advanced of 
civilizations owe themselves to it; and even revolu- 
tions have been indirectly due to it when under the 
constraint of tyranny this spirit, misguided, has 
become an explosive force among the multitudes of 
men. This fraternal spirit in Christianity is 
coming more and more to express itself in forms of 
popular government and in altruistic ways. It 
must become regnant throughout all the arts of pro- 
duction, and the avenues of distribution, till justice 
and charity consort together, and the hungry are fed, 
and the naked are clothed, and the imprisoned are 
visited, and the sick and the sinful are ministered 
unto, each according to his crying needs. Beyond all 
notions of enforced state communism, which can 



68 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



have no warrant from the book of Acts, there rises 
the lofty socialism of the Master himself, ' ' Inasmuch 
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye have done it unto me." And if the 
decisions of the judgment day are to rest upon jus- 
tice, and if justice is to be wedded with charity in the 
ultimate righting of social wrongs, if this is the con- 
clusion arrived at by our wisest leaders of thought, 
then let it be remembered that this also is the conclu- 
sion of Christ's pictured day of awful reckonings, 
and that the parable of ministrations becomes on the 
one hand the parable of sweetest invitations, and on 
the other of eternal condemnations. Christianity is 
not communism, but it is fraternism, and to the cold 
and hungry brother at the door it does not say, 
''Depart in peace; be ye warmed and filled." 



III. 

THE FIRST PERSECUTION 



"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse 
you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that 
despitefully use you and persecute you ; that ye may be the children 
of your Father who is in heaven ; for he maketh his sun to rise on 
the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the 
unjust."— Matt. v. 44, 45. 

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye 
build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchers of the 
righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we 
would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the 
prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves that ye are 
children of them who killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the meas- 
ure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can 
ye escape the judgment of hell ? "—Matt, xxiii. 29-33. 



III. 



THE FIRST PERSECUTION. 

"And as they spake to the people, the priests, and the captain of 
the temple, and the Sadducees came upon them, being grieved that 
they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection 
from the dead." — Acts iv. 2, 2. 

A remarkable source of grief surely ! This is not 
irony, it is history. Men may be known by what they 
are accustomed to weep over, as well as by what they 
delight to laugh at. 'They wagged their heads when 
Jesus died; they now mourn when he is preached. 
Thus in their mockery and their mourning these 
wretched misleaders of God's ancient, chosen, and 
glorious people, have given their measure to all the 
world, and the world has rewarded them by keeping 
their remembrance as a hiss and a by-word. In pro- 
portion to its valuation of Jesus the world metes out 
execration, not to his murderers, but to their cher- 
ished hardness of heart, and the brighter the glory 
that gathers round him the deeper the darkness into 
which their sins are cast. 

Christ's resurrection was God's answer to the 
nation that murdered Christ. The empty sepulcher 
and the miracle of Pentecost were the chagrin and 
the confusion of the haters of Jesus. The believers 
suddenly became an army numbering thousands; they 

71 



72 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



were gathered into a community, many wonders and 
signs were done by the apostles, and fear came upon 
every soul. The crucifixion darkness that gathered 
at noonday, the earthquake and the rending of the 
temple veil, the report of the resurrection and the 
miracle of tongues, the new community and the con- 
continued wonder-working of the apostles, was the 
terrible array, mightier than an army with banners, 
which God brought to front the consciences of his 
rebellious and gainsaying people. By the voice of 
this mighty array, as in the most majestic, mourn- 
ful language of forsaken love, God was still calling 
to his people, and saying, "Repent, and be baptized, 
every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for 
the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of 
the Holy Spirit." This is the Pentecost translation 
of Isaiah's tongue of fire, and of Jeremiah's mourn- 
ing, and of Ezekiel's rebukes, plus the superlative 
emphasis of Christ's own tears and blood and empty 
tomb. 

For a while the leaders of the nation were stupe- 
fied, and they offered no resistance. The apostles 
preached in the temple courts, and the multitude of 
believers increased daily. These days were even 
more crucial to the nation than the ones that em- 
braced the trial and the crucifixion of Jesus, for at 
that time the divine demonstration was not yet com- 
plete, and there was room still for excuse and prayer 
and forgiveness. Therefore the prayer of the pas- 
sion, "Father, forgive them; they know not what 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



73 



they do." But now the evidence is all in; the dem- 
onstration is complete; Christ has arisen, and the 
Holy Spirit has been given; whom they have re- 
jected, God has accepted, and the stone of their 
stumbling has been made by Jehovah himself the 
head of the corner. There is no longer any excuse. 
For days they have nothing to say, and they seem 
cast in the balance, hesitating, terrified. There are 
moments freighted with destinies, and these Pente- 
costal days, the birth season of the church of the 
Redeemer, were the last days of grace extended to 
the "children of Abraham," the revilers of Jesus. 
The evidence of the Holy Spirit witnessing to the 
resurrection of Jesus in miracles of speech, and with 
heart-piercings, and gifts of healing, was before 
them daily, and in the very precincts of the temple, 
for "these things were not done in a corner." It 
was their last call, and it was crucial. Beyond this 
no offer could be made, for it was the call of the 
Holy Spirit dwelling in the community of the be- 
lievers, glorifying Jesus, and convincing the unbe- 
lievers of sin because they had rejected him; of 
righteousness because God had accepted him ; and of 
judgment because by the resurrection of Jesus the 
prince of this world was judged. From the day of 
Pentecost their resistance of the apostles was a 
resistance of the Holy Spirit, and their persecution 
of the spiritually endued community of believers 
was a final blasphemy. 
The occasion of the first persecution was the heal- 



74 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



ing of the lame man and the sermon that followed. 
Under a vine of gold with clusters of golden grapes 
as large as a man's body, sat this crippled, life-long 
beggar. It is the mark of a decadent religion to 
adorn its temples and neglect its men. Forty and six 
years had this temple been building, and the ham- 
mers of its workmen were still heard in it, and the 
expenditure upon its marble and gold was incalcula- 
ble. It seems like the irony of fate that this beggar 
should have been carried daily and placed like a hun- 
gry, ragged, human statue in the midst of this gilded 
luxuriance of architecture and art. Too frequently 
it still happens that our temples have the double 
adornment of beautiful gates and begging men. 
Encircled by this vine of gold, and standing amidst 
the clusters of its fruit of gold, the apostles stooped 
to take the ragged cripple by the hand, and to say to 
him, "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I 
have give I thee; in the name of Jesus of Nazareth 
rise up and walk." Better than the building of a 
temple is the healing of a man. Immediately the 
man, a cripple from his birth, leaped and walked, 
and entered with them into the temple, walking and 
leaping and praising God. All at once the crowds of 
well-to-do worshipers became interested in their beg- 
gar brother, and in his benefactors, whom he held 
by the hands. This gave the Apostle Peter the occa- 
sion for another sermon, the duplicate in tone and 
substance of the one on Pentecost. It was another 
of those unique occasions furnished providentially to 



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75 



the apostles in the early days of their evidential 
work. The sermon is a marvel of daring, accusing, 
excusing, and appealing speech, backed by an incar- 
nate miracle; for still as the apostle speaks, the man 
who never had walked stands and leaps, and the 
wondering worshipers stand staring, and listening 
that they may learn the secret of the miracle. And 
when they have learned it curiosity has passed over 
into conviction, for once more they hear nothing but 
the story of the Christ crucified at their hands, raised 
up by the hand of God, and proving his potency to 
forgive by his potency to heal. The results of Pen- 
tecost were well nigh repeated, the three thousand 
having become five thousand before that day's even- 
tide. It was a beneficent work, full of holy teach- 
ing, and love, and healing, and hope, and forgiveness. 
There was nothing unseemly in the conduct of the 
apostles; they were unarmed, they stirred up no 
seditions, they made no threats. Why, then, were 
they persecuted? 

Their words were sharper than a two-edged sword, 
and their teachings more revolutionary than an army 
with banners. They were persecuted for the same 
reason that Jesus was persecuted; the prince of this 
world had nothing in him, but everything to oppose 
in him. In an age of intense and bitter hatreds 
Jesus and his apostles preached love; in the midst 
of a nation rankling with every possible retaliation 
they preached forbearance and forgiveness; into a 
world governed by armies and swords and iron seep- 



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ters they came with broken reeds, and thorn-crowned 
brows, preaching disarmament. Immediately after 
Jesus had fed the five thousand men with five barley 
loaves and two small fishes they came to take him by 
force and make him a king. What a commissariat 
he would have been for an army marching against 
Rome! Narrow nationalists and hateful trucklers 
that they were, that was the thought uppermost 
with them — they would make him a king, and their 
armies should have leadership, and no need of for- 
aging. But when Jesus refused to be such a king, 
and when he persisted in still going about and doing 
good, preaching peace, and forbearance, and for- 
giveness, their disappointment and indignation knew 
no bounds. At last, after the resurrection of Laz- 
arus, they gave expression to the full secret of their 
opposition to him in these words: 44 What do we? 
for this man doeth many miracles. If we let him 
thus alone all men will believe on him, and the Rom- 
ans will come and take away our place and nation." 
(John xi. 47, 48; xii. 10, 11). They even consulted 
that they might put Lazarus also to death, " Because 
that by reason of him many of the Jews went away 
and believed on Jesus." To a nation, therefore, 
hating Caesar worse than Satan Jesus was repugnant. 
Hence at last he was called upon to die in political 
martyrdom to his own peace principles. 

There were religious reasons also for their oppo- 
sition to Jesus and his apostles. Jesus exposed mer- 
cilessly the hollowness of Phariseeism and the 



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heresies of Sadduceeism. Their slavery to Sabbath 
rituals, their mummery of endless ceremonialism, 
their self-righteous disdain of everybody not of their 
own set, their street-corner praying, their vain- 
glorious alms-giving, their tithing of mint, their neg- 
lect of mercy, their hand-washings and their heart- 
hardenings, their utter self-abandonment to forms 
and rituals and hatred and hypocrisy and supercili- 
ousness were met on the part of Jesus with stern 
rebuke, and utter condemnation, and warnings 
against an eternal hell. Upon them at last Jesus 
fixed his stigma forever; they felt its sting, and they 
never forgave him for it: "Whited sepulchers, full 
of dead men's bones!" When the time came for 
it their reply was, "Crucify him! Crucify him! " 

To a people utterly false nothing is more repulsive 
than truth, and to a people utterly hateful nothing 
can be more revolutionary than love. Hence it was 
that the light shined in darkness and the darkness 
comprehended it not; that Jesus came to his own 
and his own received him not. 

With such a man in such a nation, one of two 
things was inevitable; they must repent, or he must 
perish. They had no intention of the former, he 
had a full intention of the latter; that is, he intended 
to perish that he might not perish. From the first, 
Jesus knew that his face was toward the cross. 
When Peter acknowledged him as the Christ, the 
Son of the living God, Jesus in turn acknowledged 
the title, and immediately pointed out to his aston- 



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ished disciple the pathway that a being wearing 
worthily such a title must take through this world. 
From the day of his temptation and triumph in the 
wilderness, it was as clear to him as a mathematical 
demonstration, that love can be made perfect only in 
loving one's enemies, and in loving them enough to 
die for them, and in loving them unto death, should 
they demand it. Likewise that forgiveness can be 
made perfect only in forgiving as long as the breath 
of prayer can move to repentance; and that non-re- 
taliation can find its perfection only in dying, not in 
cursing, nor even in commanding the wrath of 
legions of angels to go forth smiting. If instead of 
dying Jesus had retaliated, had he smitten the nation 
with sudden destruction, there would have been an 
end of love and of forbearance, and a mockery of 
his own peace principles. Had he given himself to 
malediction instead of prayers, he would have been 
false to his own sermons and parables; if being re- 
viled he had reviled, if suffering he had threatened, 
his superlative teaching would have fallen feebly upon 
the world as having no complement in superlative 
conduct. In short, had Jesus saved himself from 
the cross, he would have betrayed his own principles, 
and the Sermon on the Mount would never have had 
a commentator. Had he not perished, his teachings 
would have perished. Had he saved himself, his 
life would have been in vain as reaching no climax 
in the actual self-renunciation of love, so that quite 
literally he died in order that he might not die. 



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79 



Thus on the one hand there is the explanation of 
persecution, and on the other, of suffering, or what 
is the same, of love which is atoning and sacrificial 
because self-sacrificial. Under the guidance of the 
Holy Spirit, the apostles entered upon the same style 
of life and doctrine that had paved Christ's way to 
the cross, and as he was persecuted so were they. 
In the persons of the apostles the enemies of Christ 
were still fighting Christ. 

This is the best evidence of their orthodoxy, or 
rather, Christodoxy. There may be minor differ- 
ences between the teaching, for instance, of 
Peter and that of John; there may be a "Petrine 
doctrine," and a "Pauline doctrine," and a 
" Johannean doctrine," but when we see Peter 
and John and Paul identified in suffering for Christ, 
we know that their enemies .identified them in their 
presentation of Christ. So far as " the tendency 
theory" goes, all these men had a tendency to suf- 
fer for Christ; or "the accommodation theory," 
they all accommodated themselves to their sufferings 
in a very Christlike way; or " the mythical theory," 
it is no myth that the rulers and elders and scribes 
united in hating them as one without attempt- 
ing to discover microscopical differences of doctrine 
among them. In the eyes of these enemies of the 
cross, it was a sufficient condemnation that they 
preached and healed and won disciples in the name 
of Jesus, and as in the eyes of their enemies that 
was their sufficient condemnation, so in the eyes of 



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all generations of believers it is their sufficient vin- 
dication. The Apostle Paul in more than one strik- 
ing passage appeals to the persecutions he endured as 
an evidence of his loyalty to Christ, claiming to be 
not the least of the apostles in that his sufferings 
were not the least, and affirming that if he should 
preach circumcision, that is, Mosaism or Judaism, 
he would no longer suffer; " Then is the offense 
of the cross ceased." Speculative schoolmen, and 
dogmatic theologians, unoccupied except in endless 
wranglings one with another, and in worshiping their 
own syllogisms, have sought to enforce, each as final, 
a multitude of dogmas ; but the cross itself stands as 
the symbol of the one creed for which Christ died, 
and the offense of the cross on the one hand, and 
the love of it on the other, were the primitive signs 
of orthodoxy and heterodoxy. 

The first persecutions began timidly enough. 
Late in the evening Peter and John were impris- 
oned. Next day there gathered together the whole 
array of the religiously and politically elite of Jeru- 
salem, not to compliment these humble men for hav- 
ing done a great and kindly deed, but in self-stultifica- 
tion to confront them with this preposterous question: 
"By what power, or by what name, have ye done 
this?" To ask this question was to go and touch a 
mountain clothed in thunders and lightnings more 
terrible than Mount Sinai in the days when " if 
so much as a beast touched the mountain, he should 
be stoned or thrust through with a dart." At the 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



bl 



touch there rushed out the lightning and the thunder 
of apostolic, Pentecostal speech. 44 By the name of 
Jesus of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God 
raised from the dead, even by him doth this man 
stand before you whole. This is the stone which 
was set at naught of you builders, which is become 
the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation 
in any other; for there is none other name under 
heaven given among men, whereby we must be 
saved." 44 Unlearned and ignorant men!" they ob- 
served superciliously of them. They marveled nev- 
ertheless, and made one other observation not so 
gratifying, namely, that these " unlearned and igno- 
rant men" had been with Jesus. (See Comments, Ch. 
iv. 13). And one other thing happened that was not 
comforting; the man who was healed stood there, 
their well-known beggar-brother, who had always 
heretofore contented himself with sitting humbly in 
their presence, pleading for alms. They were non- 
plused. They must get this man and the two 
tongues of fire out of sight before they could say 
another word. Then they communed and said, "A 
notable miracle has been done, and we cannot deny 
it." As much as to say, We would deny it if we 
could; we would lie about it if we could make a lie 
go. They must find a way out of it, however, and 
this time they touched more timidly their mountain 
of terrors. They called the apostles, and com- 
manded them not to preach in the name of Jesus ! 
and threatened them ! and — let them go ! And this 

6 



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was the stroke they got for their pains: " Whether 
it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you 
more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but 
speak the things we have seen and heard." 

Evidently the authorities made a mistake in trying 
to question these men. After all, the only way to 
confront Christ is with hammer and nails; or the 
thirteenth century Roman Catholic way, shouting, 
" Kill! kill! the Lord will know his own;" or Abdul 
Hamid's modern way, with sword and gun, stabbing 
and shooting at leisure, and ad libitum. Only in 
such ways can Christ and his apostolic followers be 
answered without chagrin. And such ways are not 
finally effective, for the dead Christ rises, and the 
Christian martyr only begins to preach when his mar- 
tyrdom is complete. 

Upon their release the apostles went to their own 
company, grown to thousands now, and united with 
them in a sublime chorus of praise, ending with the 
prayer, "And now, Lord, behold their threatenings; 
and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness 
they may speak thy word, by stretching forth thy 
hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be 
done in the name of thy holy Child Jesus." And the 
Lord answered them with an earthquake, and with a 
renewed enduement of the Holy Spirit. 

Human threatenings and divine encouragements! 
The apostles became giants, heroic and impetuous. 
They preached and healed in Solomon's porch 
(v. 12), and multitudes of believers were added to 



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83 



the Lord, and the sick were brought from surround- 
ing cities, and the very shadow of Peter passing by 
was potent to heal. The summary judgment upon 
the first deceivers, Ananias and Sapphira, must have 
contributed to the dread of the situation on the part 
of the authorities, but at last their rage overmastered 
their prudence, and they threw the apostles into 
prison (v. 18). The next morning the high priest 
and the sect of the Sadducees called the council 
together, and enacted the following comedy. They 
sat in state, a semi-circular row of grey beards, 
"tall, good-looking, wealthy, learned (both in divine 
law and divers branches of profane science, such as 
medicine, mathematics, astronomy, magic, idolatry, 
etc.), in order that they might be able to judge in 
these matters;" they sat thus, waiting, anxious to 
judge the "ignorant and unlearned" men who had 
been with Jesus. These men, not destined to stay 
in prison that night, were at their appointed busi- 
ness, teaching and healing in the temple courts. 
Officers called for them at the prison, but it was the 
wrong place. Doubt grew to astonishment with the 
double report of their absence from the prison, and 
their presence in the temple. They were brought, 
however, "without violence," and the high priest 
passed upon them, unintentionally, this high compli- 
ment: "Did not we straightly command you that 
you should not teach in that name? And behold, ye 
have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend 
to bring this man's blood upon us." And the quick 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



retort, — "We ought to obey God rather than men. 
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye 
slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted 
with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to 
give repentance to Israel, and the forgiveness of 
sins. And we are witnesses of these things; and so 
is the Holy Spirit, whom God hath given to them 
that obey him." 

This is the model martyr speech. Heroism can go 
no higher. Paul, and Justin Martyr, and Savon- 
arola, and Martin Luther, and John Huss, and Cran- 
mer, and Ridley, and Latimer, and John Knox, 
fronting their respective Sanhedrins, popes and 
Bloody Marys, are worthy of places in the same class 
with the Apostle Peter, he standing first among them 
in daring speech and deed for Christ, this being his 
true and only primacy. 

There are two effects from being "cut to the 
heart," one the Pentecost effect, the other the effect 
upon the "tall, good-looking, learned " members of 
the Sanhedrin. Murder was their staple argument 
against truth. They had murdered Jesus, they were 
now intent upon murdering the apostles. But the 
prudent counsels of Gamaliel prevailed. Perhaps 
they remembered Ananias and Sapphira; perhaps, 
the escape of the prisoners ; perhaps, the miracle of 
tongues; perhaps, the darkness and earthquake and 
rending of the temple veil; perhaps, the resurrection 
of Jesus. "Tall, good-looking, wealthy" misleaders 
of the land, cowed, conscienceless, squirming, with 



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85 



no reason but prejudice, and no mercy but cowardice, 
on the verge of perdition, and dragging their nation 
at their heels like a hound in the leash, — that is 
what the Sanhedrin had grown to be. In its help- 
lessness and its fury and its emptiness of everything 
good, lifting its heel only to kick against the goads, 
and in its blindness crashing 

''Up against the thick-bossed shield 
Of God's judgment in the field," 

it is the type of all truckling senates, and cowardly 
congresses, and time-serving, partisan parliaments. 

"These first persecutions stimulated the zeal and 
enthusiasm of the first disciples, and braced them for 
the struggle (iv. 24; v. 41). 'It is better to obey 
God than man.' In this phrase we hear by anticipa- 
tion the farewell of the apostles to national Judaism. 
So, little by little, Christianity and Judaism came to 
exhibit the hostility latent in their principles. Let a 
man now arise bold enough to disentangle the two 
systems and set them in antithesis, and we shall see 
the great conflict begun by the discourses and the 
death of Jesus break forth again as freely as before. 
Such a man was Stephen, deacon and martyr." 

In this paragraph, full of discernment, quoted 
from Sabatier, there are indicated the source and the 
direction of Jewish persecution against the growing 
church. 



IV. 

THE FIRST MARTYR 



"My Lord died for my sins: shall I not gladly give this poor life 
for him? " — Savonarola. 

"When the cap painted over with devils, and inscribed 'Here- 
siarch ' was put on his brow, he murmured, ' My Lord Jesus wore 
for my sake a crown of thorns ; shall I not wear this lighter dis- 
grace for the sake of him? I will, indeed, and that right gladly.'" 
— John Huss. 

"Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man! We 
shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I 
trust shall never be put out." — Latimer. 

"Father, forgive them; they know not what they do."— Luke 

xxiii. 34. 



IV. 



THE FIRST MARTYR. 

"And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down and cried with a 
loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he 
had said this he fell asleep. "—Acts vii. 59, 60. 

The martyrdom of Stephen marks an epoch in the 
history of the first church. That two or three years 
should have passed away before the first blood was 
shed is noteworthy. The shadow of the crucifixion 
still rested upon the guilty nation, and the boldness 
of the apostles was their best protection. At last the 
storm broke, and in its fury there was a demand for 
blood. In the growth of the church, in the apostles' 
unanswerable logic of word and deed, in the appear- 
ance of new men of mark, such as Stephen, resistless 
in the spirit and wisdom of his advocacy, there was 
enough to convert the "children of wisdom;" 
enough to enrage unto ruin typical Pharisees and 
Sadducees. Through the church composed of regen- 
erate men, and crowned with miracles of speech 
and deed, the Holy Spirit became the savor of life 
unto life, and of death unto death. 

The first martyr was a member of the first com- 
mittee. There was a growing church with its grow- 
ing community of goods, and the burden of their 

89 



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STUDIES IX ACTS 



distribution became too great for the apostles. 
Besides, the Grecians were murmuring that their 
widows were neglected in the daily ministration. 
True Christian policy dictated that Grecians should 
be appointed to answer the complaints of Grecians. 
In democratic style, therefore, the people were per- 
mitted to choose seven men from among themselves 
for this daily diaconate. Whom the people chose 
the apostles appointed. Here is democracy with the 
sanction of aristocracy. Where the Holy Spirit 
guides government is a minor matter, for over the 
democracy of the people and the wise aristocracy of 
the apostles rises the autocracy of the Spirit himself. 

These seven men are never called deacons. Their 
appointment was simply a question of the proper 
division of labor, the apostles becoming thereby 
more especially and fittingly deacons of the word, 
and the chosen seven especially and fittingly deacons 
of the " tables," or counters. They were all dea- 
cons, servants, ministers, but each in his own place; 
it was all the Lord's work, and they were brethren; 
there was no clerical caste. The distinctive offices of 
the diaconate and the bishopric arose at a later date, 
and seem never within the limits of the Xew Testa- 
ment literature to have been absolutely fixed, for 
men called themselves deacons, or overseers, or pres- 
byters according to what they were doing at the time. 
Even the first seven are not rigidly fixed to the 
diaconate of tables. It was not long till two of them 
at least became deacons of the word; Philip preached 



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91 



in Samaria, and became the evangelist and baptist of 
the Ethiopian officer; and Stephen attained to the 
diaconate of wonders and miracles and irresistible 
speech, — of martydom even! 

To infer, therefore, that the appointment of the 
seven is a precedent for the ordaining of deacons 
such as are now found in various congregations of 
Christians is unwarranted. The whole procedure is 
rather a precedent for the appointment of a commit- 
tee to meet an emergency. Is there a needful thing 
to be done? Appoint a proper person, or company 
of persons, to do it. That is the double dictate of 
common prudence and of the Holy Spirit. 

Carrying out the supposition previously made that 
the Jews of Jerusalem were overawed by the scenes 
of the crucifixion and of Pentecost, it is interesting 
to note that the murder of the first martyr was 
wrought at the instigation of foreign Jews, or possi- 
bly even of proselytes. "There arose certain of 
the synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians, 
and Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia, and of 
Asia, disputing with Stephen." There were num- 
bers of synagogues in Jerusalem, the meeting-places 
respectively of such foreign Jews as are named in the 
text. Equally zealous with the Jerusalem Jews for 
"the holy place," and "the law," and "the cus- 
toms which Moses delivered," they had not yet expe- 
rienced the terrors of opposing Christ and his apos- 
tles. The dread of the name of the Nazarene had 
not yet settled down upon them. They were fresh in 



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the work of persecution, and to them Satan trans- 
ferred it. The whole of the chosen people, native 
born to Judaea and foreign born, seemed fated to 
stain their hands in the blood of Jesus and the proto- 
martyrs. 

The charge against Stephen is a compliment to 
him. It is an evidence of his discernment. Already 
he saw further than the apostles themselves into the 
genius of the Gospel and the destinies of the nation. 
There was antagonism between the Gospel and the 
law of Moses at many points, and if Christianity 
triumphed Judaism must suffer defeat. The new 
wine could not be put into old bottles. The apostles 
were true to Christ and the leadings of the Holy 
Spirit, but they were also traditionalists, and as such 
they still "went up into the temple at the hour of 
prayer to worship," and were doubtful about admit- 
ting the Gentiles into the church except on a Jewish 
basis, and perhaps, loving both the old and the new, 
fondly hoped for some providential reconciliation 
between the new cloth and the old garment. But 
the enemies of the cross, hating it, saw its tendencies 
more clearly through their hatred than the apostles 
through their love. Evidently Stephen saw precisely 
what his persecutors saw, namely, that there was no 
possible reconciliation between the spirit of the Jews 
and the spirit of Jesus ; between his liberty and their 
bigotry; between his mercy and their cruelty, his 
love and their hatred, his culture and their cult. 
Stephen and his enemies, therefore, occupy the same 



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93 



standpoint as to their prevision of results should 
Christianity triumph. He and they differ only in 
attitude, and the difference is deadly. 

The falsity of their evidence against him consists 
in this, that they attributed to him as blasphemy 
what he was preaching, either implicitly or explicitly, 
as inevitable from the standpoint of Gospel truth. 
He was accused of a double blasphemy, first against 
"the holy place," and second, against "the law" 
(vi. 13). His speech is an admirable answer to this 
accusation, and should be studied wholly in view of 
it. It is biblical, and it is a rhetorical model. It 
rushes on like a stream, swollen and impassioned. 
It is historical, but not accurately so. Some of its 
statements are not in keeping with the records, as, 
for instance, when it is said that Abraham bought 
the burying ground in Sychem of the sons of Emmor, 
whereas it was Jacob who made this purchase, Abra- 
ham having bought the cave of Machpelah from 
Ephron the Hittite. (See Comments.) Twice the 
Septuagint is quoted rather than our present Hebrew 
text, and Moses is declared "learned in all the wis- 
dom of the Egyptians," though the Old Testament 
is silent as to that, as it is likewise with regard to his 
"trembling" at the burning bush. It is an inspired 
speech, all but its jots and tittles. Something may 
be chargeable to the reporter, and besides, mere 
technical inspiration is no inspiration at all. We 
must get away from that if we would entertain the 
Bible's own view of its own inspiration. The quota- 



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STUDIES IX ACTS 



tions of Jesus are not always verbatim, but they are 
none the less divine. On great moral questions, such 
as the abolition of slavery, or the prohibition of the 
liquor traffic, we may not have a single text to bring 
face to face with our problem in such a way as to 
make it say, "Thou shalt not enslave thy brother," 
or "Thou shalt not sell wine and beer," yet we may 
feel that we have the whole Bible on our side, say- 
ing, with all the lightnings and thunderings of its 
Mosaic inspiration, and with all the blood-marked 
emphasis of its Gospel revelations, " Thou shalt 
not." It is the soul of the Bible that is inspired, 
and its body is the best that can be given to it in 
human speech. 

The inaccuracies of the speech are evidences of its 
genuineness. A second century writer, at leisure in 
his study, with a method by the end, would have 
taken pains to be verbally exact. As the speech 
stands, it bears every mark of having been delivered 
to such an audience as the Jewish Sanhedrin in the 
early history of the first church, and the view-point 
of it is worthy of the forerunner of the Apostle Paul. 
True at once to the trend of Jewish history and to 
the genius of the Gospel, full of impetuosity and of 
sudden adaptations to the mood of the hearers, 
bristling with indirect reproofs of the localized idea 
of God and his providence, and containing, in the 
language of Moses himself, one crowning rebuke of 
their rejection of Jesus — it is no wonder that this 



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95 



sermon had the effect of a fire-brand upon the 
already overheated tempers of its auditors. 

The early part of the speech, down to the thirty- 
fifth verse, is fitted to chain the attention of the 
Sanhedrin, and to prove that Stephen held in rever- 
ence the history of his people and the law of Moses. 
He had been charged with blasphemy; here all is 
reverent. But with the thirty-fifth verse there 
begins an application of history that is keener than a 
two-edged sword. Moses, whom Grod had chosen, 
through whom he showed wonders in the wilderness 
for forty years, and through whom he spoke on 
Mount Sinai, their fathers had rejected; they made a 
calf and worshiped it, and turned back in their 
hearts to Egypt, and took up the tabernacle of 
Moloch. It was terrible to remind the proud mem- 
bers of the Jewish council of their nation's historic 
rejection of Moses, and the idolatries of their fathers; 
it was still more terrible to remind them of a pre- 
diction that this divinely accepted, humanly rejected 
Moses had made, namely, that God would raise up un- 
to them of their brethren a prophet like unto himself, 
whom in all things they should hear, and to apply 
this prediction to Jesus, and to say to them, "Ye 
stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye 
do always resist the Holy Spirit: as your fathers did, 
so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your 
fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which 
shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of 
whom ye have been now the betrayers and murder- 



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ers: Who have received the law by the disposition 
of angels, and have not kept it." 

The Christological standpoint of this proto-martyr 
is the same as that of the Apostle Peter on the day of 
Pentecost, and his boldness in denouncing the lead- 
ers of the land as the murderers of Jesus parallels 
that of the chiefest apostles. This application of 
history and denunciation of the death of the Savior 
at their hands, cut like a saw to the hearts of men 
who once had cried, in thoughtless, heartless rage, 
"His blood be on us, and on our children." 

The inspiration of Stephen at this moment carried 
him beyond the range of daring and triumphant 
speech. Full of the Holy Spirit, he "looked up 
steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, 
and Jesus standing on the right hand of God." 
Granted thus at the same moment a Theophany and 
a Christophany, he cried out, saying, "Behold, I see 
the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on 
the right hand of God." This should have overawed 
his enemies, and turned them from their bitterness, 
for if before he began his speech they that looked 
upon him "saw his face as it had been the face of an 
angel," what must have been its rapture in this 
moment of ecstatic vision ! But . a height of per- 
versity, second only, as it would seem, to that which 
mocked the dying Savior, was revealed in them when 
they cried out, and stopped their ears, and rushed 
upon him, and cast him out of the city and stoned 
him. 



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97 



The style of his dying was Christlike. If men 
were not able to resist the wisdom and power of his 
speaking, how could they resist the Christliness of 
his dying! There is an eloquence of action mightier 
than the eloquence of diction. But when human 
speech has assumed its highest form in prayer and 
forgiveness, and when prayer and forgiveness and 
trust are sealed unto eternal glory by calm and 
sweet and heroic dying, the plea to man by man thus 
made is irresistible, except by those whose hearts are 
stone. They stopped their ears, they rushed upon 
him, and the stones with which they crushed him 
were not so hard as the hearts with which they hated 
him. And these were the hearts that Jesus saw, 
harder than stone, flintier than the rock, more cruel 
than death, full of prejudice, big with hatred, and 
alive and throbbing only with murder, when he gave 
utterance to his parables of judgment, and his terri- 
ble simile of whited sepulchers and dead men's 
bones, and his awful philippic against Pharisaic 
hypocrites, fated to the condemnation of hell; ah! 
these were the hearts he saw when he mourned over 
Jerusalem and foretold her destruction. Had hell 
been discoverable no otherwhere in the universe, 
Jesus would have looked into these hearts and found 
it there. Full of the conceptions of hatred, and 
pregnant with bloodshed, it was from these hearts 
that there came forth in the days of the siege of 
their "holy place" internal discord, high-handed 
revenge, secret assassination, public brawls, street 



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fights, multiplied murders, and all the untold woes 
of fanatical rapine, which, together with the siege, 
have made the name of their city as significant of 
cursing and doom, oh the one hand, as it is of peace 
and "an eternal weight of glory," on the other. 

The death of Stephen had not even the mock but 
finished forms of law for its sanction, as in the case 
of Jesus. The members of the council, whose busi- 
ness it was to protect life; whose maxim was, "The 
Sanhedrin is to save, not to destroy life;" whose 
president at the beginning of the trial "solemnly 
admonished the witnesses, pointing out the precious- 
ness of human life, earnestly beseeching them care- 
fully and calmly to reflect whether they had not 
overlooked some circumstance which might favor the 
innocence of the accused;" — the members of this 
august council, composed of "middle-aged men, tall, 
good-looking, wealthy, learned — none of them very 
old persons, nor eunuchs, nor proselytes, nor nethi- 
nim," failed to render a decision at all. According 
to custom, they should have waited till the next day 
before pronouncing Stephen guilty. But they lost 
their gravity, and stopped their ears, and howled, 
and rushed upon their victim, and the Sanhedrin 
became a mob. 

They should have credit for quick work. The 
refinements of persecution were not yet invented. 
They did not cut off his ears, or slit his nose, or 
brand him with hot irons, or stretch him on racks, or 
hang him with a strappado, or blow him up to burst- 



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99 



ing with a bellows, or roast him at a slow fire, or 
crown him as heresiarch with painted devils on his 
cap. In a way blunt, and straightforward enough, 
they crushed him with stones. The above more 
deliberate and scientific and satisfactory ways of 
defending the faith, and reclaiming heretics, and 
propagating the Gospel, were left to the sanctified, 
inventive genius of Roman Catholicism. In such 
ways the "Holy Father Infallible," and "The Holy 
Mother Church," have shown the world how to chas- 
tise their children out of paternal love for them, and 
with tender solicitation for their spiritual welfare. 
With such beneficent chastisements the " Holy 
Mother" has murdered— the astonishing estimate 
is — fifty millions of her children! 

But back of all persecution, and more astonishing 
than it, and sadder, lies the utter misconception of 
the genius of the Gospel and the method of Jesus. 
From the standpoint of Christ's commission the 
heresiarch is he who does not go and teach and 
preach and baptize in the name and the spirit of 
Christ; and from the standpoint of the cross the 
heresiarch is he who sins against the law of love. 
Under Christ we have no weapons but truth and love 
and forbearance and forgiveness; guided by him we 
have no appeal but to the minds and hearts and 
consciences of beings like-minded and like-hearted 
with ourselves, and conscience-crowned as well as 
we. Education was the method of Jesus. His 
society is a teaching brotherhood. To him the miter 



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and the crown were equally repugnant. He dis- 
dained the sword, and healed its wounds. His death 
is the seal upon his life of a true teacher's limitless 
love, and his resurrection is proof of a perfect teach- 
er's rightful regnancy. He is not persecutor, and 
therefore destroyer, but he is educator, and therefore 
Redeemer. Master of masters in moral and spiritual 
realms he cries to his followers with the emphasis of 
pierced hands and thorn-marked brow, "Go teach." 
His misrepresentatives, enthroned, crowned, scep- 
tered, mitered in Csesar's fashion, have spoken their 
anathemas and their excommunications with threat- 
enings of hell and the horrors of the battlefield, and 
out of hearts full of the hatred from which murder 
springs, they have cried, "Go kill," 

Seven times on the cross Jesus opened his lips, and 
there continued to speak as never man spake. Two 
of his matchless utterances find close resemblance in 
the Avords of his dying disciple: 44 Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do;" "Father, 
into thy hands I commend my spirit." Oh, the 
heights and depths of Christ's manward love and 
forgiveness, and of his Godward love and trust! 
Heights and depths measured, yet measureless by 
these last prayers of his passion ! We in our days of 
delight, repeating our easy and customary forms of 
prayer, attain too often only to the semblance of love 
and forgiveness and trust. But he who through days 
of distress, or amidst a storm of crushing, mangling 
stones prays thus for his enemies and himself has 



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101 



attained to the reality of discipleship in the school of 
Christ. The first martyr claimed by right of Christly 
dying, Christly glory. 

"And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and 
saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled 
down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this 
sin to their charge. And when he had said this he 
fell asleep.' ' 



THE FIRST GENTILE CONVERT 



"Calvary made an irrevocable breach between the religion of the 
past and of the future. Jesus, in dying, guaranteed his work 
against any unintelligent or timid reaction. From the outset he 
planted his cross between Christianity and Judaism; and so often 
as his disciples are tempted to retrace their steps, they find it 
placed as an impassable barrier between them and their nation. 
The cross, in fact, was the real motive principle of all the progress 
which ensued ; it was this which gave impulse and impetus to the 
primitive church, and drove it irresistibly beyond the limits of 
Judaism. " — Sabatier. 

104 



V. 



THE FIRST GENTILE CONVERT. 

"Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with 
them."— A cts xi. 3. 

"God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common 
or unclean."— Acts x. 28. 

The conversion of Cornelius and his household 
equals in its progressive significance the miracle of 
Pentecost. Once more the Apostle Peter, endued 
with the Holy Spirit, stands in the forefront of the 
evangelistic movement. The keys of the kingdom 
are in this man's keeping, and it his province to go 
forward opening doors of prophecy, and of liberty, 
and of salvation till the Gentiles come to Christ's 
light, and their kings to the brightness of his glory. 

On the day of Pentecost the Church of Christ was 
born ; on the day of the conversion of Cornelius she 
reached her majority. From that time she was ready 
to go forth "conquering and to conquer." On that 
day she cast aside the leading strings of Judaism, 
and declared herself equipped for heavenly minis- 
tries among the Gentile races of all the world. In 
the conversion of Cornelius the young church gave 
the challenge of her spirituality and universality to 
decadent Judaism and the cramped and cramping 
forms of the Mosaic ritual. Through the lips of her 

105 



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chosen first apostle, moving still under the impulse 
of the Holy Spirit, she asserted her heavenly queen- 
liness, and published at the same time the platform 
of her world-wide regnancy, saying, "God is no 
respecter of persons; but in every nation he that 
feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted 
with him." 

"All zones are one seed-field, 
And one the fostering- sky; 
Best germs the ripened ages yield 
On world-wide pinions fly. 

"High human hearts are one, 
And one their God above; 
And genial every star and sun 
To faith and hope and love." 

Perhaps a period of ten years lies between the 
conversions of Pentecost and the conversion of Cor- 
nelius, but in the plans of the Savior these two acts 
belong to the same drama. The full obedience of 
the commission requires them both as the inception 
of Christ's world-wide kingdom. The second chap- 
ter of the book of Acts is not complete without the 
tenth, and the two rise up from among the others in 
a kind of lonely majesty. In both there is the pres- 
ence of the Apostle Peter; in both the Holy Spirit 
speaks miraculously; in both Jesus is presented as 
the crucified and risen Lord and Christ; in both 
there is the offer of the remission of sins through 
the acceptance of Jesus as Savior; in both there 
breathes the spirit of prayer wherein souls are seek- 



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107 



ing a higher life, and the culmination of both is in 
the joy of conversion. 

Yet these two chapters differ by the breadth of 
whole horizons. The first of them speaks to us of 
the inception of Christ's kingdom; the second, of its 
extension; if the first means birth, the second means 
breadth; if the first indicates a center, the second is 
a circumference; if the first shows us a divinely 
commanded "beginning at Jerusalem," the second 
enters upon the divinely prescribed " uttermost parts 
of the earth." It was a new day in philosophy when 
the law of gravitation, applying to an apple, was seen 
also in its application to the solar system and the 
constellations. Likewise it was a new day in the 
church when the Jerusalem Christians were con- 
strained by the account that the Apostle Peter gave 
them of the conversion of Cornelius to "hold their 
peace, and glorify God, saying, Then hath God also 
to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life." 

Cornelius was a Gentile, and without becoming a 
Jew he became a Christian. That is the point of 
most significance in our present study. On the high- 
way leading from Jerusalem to Gaza Philip had 
preached to the Ethiopian officer, and close by the 
road, in a lake of water lying in the Wady el-Hasy, 
according to the suggestion of Edersheim, he had bap- 
tized him. But this man was a proselyte, and he had 
been to Jerusalem to worship, and there was therefore 
nothing irregular about his reception into the church. 
Furthermore, both Philip and Peter had preached 



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among the Samaritans, and many of them had been 
brought to Christ, and churches had been established 
among them, as shown by the enumeration in the 
thirty-first verse of the ninth chapter of Acts. The 
Samaritans, however, were semi-Jews, and they were 
a circumcised people. But the conversion of Cor- 
nelius and his household was unique. He and his 
were publicly and avowedly Gentiles ; they had never 
been either to Gerizim or to Jerusalem to worship; 
they gave no attendance at the altar; they had no 
part or lot or pride in the lineage of Abraham ; they 
were Gentiles, pagans, dogs, Romans. To receive 
them into the fellowship of the church without sub- 
mission to the requirements of the Mosaic law meant 
the abrogation of that law, and this to the Jew 
meant the height of treason. The Jews charged Ste- 
phen with saying that Jesus of Nazareth would destroy 
their Holy Place, and change the customs that Moses 
had delivered to them, and upon that charge they 
stoned him to death. In the conversion of Cor- 
nelius, therefore, there were the beginnings of revo- 
lution, possibly of disaster to the young church, cer- 
tainly of those misunderstandings and explanations 
and persecutions and alienations which are the birth- 
pains of liberty, and the growing-pains of progress. 

From one view-point it seems like an enigma of 
Providence that such a fruitful cause of dissension 
should have been introduced so early into the church, 
and that the Jewish and Gentile Christians should, 
within twenty years of Christ's crucifixion, stand 



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109 



fronting each other in determined antagonism. But 
victory is the fruit of battle, and the way of peace is 
necessarily the way of the sword. It was in this 
sense that the Prince of Peace said, "I come to 
bring a sword on the earth." The Gospel, universal 
in its genius, must become universal in its methods, 
and in doing so it must break away from the barriers 
of carnalism and formalism and localism and tribal- 
ism. Jerusalem could never be the religious capital 
of the world; the Jewish altar, smoking with the 
blood of rams, could never give to the world the sweet 
assurance of the remission of sins; the Jewish Sab- 
bath, burdened with numberless slavish and super- 
stitious precepts of Rabbinism, could never convey 
to the world the joy, the freedom, and the inspira- 
tion of the Lord's Day, bearing with it round the 
globe once weekly the eucharistic reminders of the 
Lord's death; the negative precepts uttered by the 
thunders of Sinai could never rise to the divine 
altruism of the Golden Rule; nor could the feasts 
and fasts and tithings and sprinklings of a mere 
ethnic cult ever become of world-wide, spiritual con- 
cern. "The law was given by Moses, but grace and 
truth came by Jesus Christ." One thing or the 
other: the new movement must settle down within 
the narrow dimensions of the old, or it must break 
away like a growing child from his cast-off garments. 
" Moses for a people; Christ for the world." Look- 
ing back upon all the dreadful history that came 
upon the Jews during the generation that saw Jesus 



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STUDIES IX ACTS 



perish on the cross, one must see that had the new 
movement confined itself to the limits of Judaism it 
must inevitably have been buried, like a child in the 
grave of its mother. The salvation of the movement 
was in its enlargement. The historic necessities were 
that the Church of Christ should extend her offer of 
salvation to all the world, or be herself condemned 
to destruction. She must seek to save the nations if 
she would be saved by them. The time had come 
when the apostles of the cross must go boldly to Cor- 
nelius, looking out from his fortress in Csesarea upon 
the waters of the Mediterranean; to Lydia, praying 
upon the banks of the Gangites; to the jailer in Phil- 
ippi, amidst his granite walls and iron bars, and 
say to each and all of them, "These fortresses and 
river banks and prison walls are as holy as the Holy 
of Holies when here, through Christ, you present 
your bodies as living sacrifices unto God, esteeming 
such sacrifice reasonable service." The Holy Spirit 
saw fit to make Cornelius the occasion of such 
enlargement, and the first fruits of it, and the 
Apostle Peter the instrument of it. 

That we may appreciate these two men in their 
meeting and their mutual relations, we must first 
study them apart, remembering that each, on his 
pathway to find the other, was under the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit. God had these men in training 
for their meeting. As typical Jew and typical Gen- 
tile, yet prepared, the one for the declaration, the 
other for the reception of the Gospel, they meet; 



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111 



ana thereafter they stand before the world, not as 
representatives of the deplorable schisms and 
hatreds among men, but as types together, mutual 
and fraternal, of the "new man in Christ." 

The Jews esteemed it their religious and political 
duty to hate the Gentiles. From the days of Abraham 
their theory and their practice had united in making 
them an exclusive people, and from the days of the 
captivity in Babylon they were a fanatical people, 
hating all not Jews, and courting their hatred. By 
the rivers of Babylon they dreamed and sang of 
revenge, but never of forgiveness, saying with awful 
imprecation, "O daughter of Babylon, who art to be 
destroyed, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as 
thou hast served us ! Happy shall he be that taketh 
and dasheth thy little ones against the stones!" 

There was a tradition that at Mount Sinai the Jews 
were cleansed from the impurities that cling to man- 
kind by reason of the relations between Eve and the 
serpent, and which still cling to all the rest of man- 
kind. They said God cares more for one Israelite 
than for all the rest of the world. Gentile babes 
were unclean from their birth. The Mishna forbids 
aid to a Gentile mother in her hour of need, or the 
giving of nourishment to her new-born babe, lest a 
child should be brought up for idolatry. One maxim 
reached the height of scowling hatred: "The best 
among the Gentiles, kill; the best among serpents, 
crush its head." 

Chosen of God as a medium and a means to a 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



beneficent end, they mistook themselves as being the 
beginning and the end of God's purposes, and con- 
cluding that he had cast off all other people, they 
settled down into the rankest of Pharisaical self- 
complacency, and from the standpoint both of their 
hatred and their exclusiveness, they interpreted their 
prophecies concerning the promised Messiah. Dur- 
ing the generation of which we are speaking, the 
Romans were their special objects of hatred because 
they were the political lords of the land, and were 
looked upon as being the despoilers of the glory of 
Israel. Hating Rome worse than sin, and Caesar 
worse than Satan, they naturally planned for a Mes- 
siah who should be a prince, and a soldier, and a 
political redeemer. How absolutely were they dis- 
appointed in Christ! He rebuked their hatred while 
he healed their sick ones, refused their proffered 
crowns while he fed their multitudes, and preached 
forgiveness while he paid tribute to Csesar, till at last 
they said, "If we let him thus alone, the Romans will 
come and take away our place and nation." 

Now the Apostle Peter was a true Jew, born and 
bred with all the inherited and inculcated antipathies 
of his race. Hence his rebuke of Jesus, as recorded 
in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew, and his mourn- 
ful but inevitable denial, as recorded in the twenty- 
sixth chapter. Hence also his pathetic and patriotic 
question at the ascension of Jesus: "Wilt thou at 
this time restore again the kingdom to Israel f 9 9 
Up to the time of Pentecost this man had had line 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



113 



upon line, precept upon precept; yet there was 
required a miracle of spiritual guidance lest he 
should speak amiss, and launch forth upon a crusade 
against the Gentile enemies of his people and nation 
instead of proclaiming the spiritual triumphs and 
heavenly promises of the true Messiah. But the 
heights of heavenly-directed speech attained by this 
apostle on Pentecost are to be surpassed, should he 
still submit to that Spirit which was guiding him 
into all truth. 

When Cornelius sent for Peter, he was 4 'lodged in 
the house of one Simon, a tanner, whose house was 
by the seaside.'* With this tanner he had lodged 
many days, unconscious that this was a preparation 
for his further departure from old prejudices, and 
for the braving of uncleannesses. Tanners were 
esteemed unclean. This man's house was by the 
seaside, possibly for convenience, but certainly be- 
cause he was not permitted to live in the town of 
Joppa. The rabbis said, "It is impossible that the 
world can do without tanners, but woe unto that man 
who is a tanner! " They released a widow from the 
law requiring her to marry her deceased husband's 
brother, if that brother happened to be a tanner. 
"He is lodged in the house of one Simon, a tanner." 
It needed no other description; everybody knew 
where that house was, for everybody was accustomed 
to shun it. And that Peter, the primate of the apos- 
tles, should bear the stigma of such lodgings, shows 
that he had not been under the tuition of Jesus in 

8 



114 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



vain. However, there must be another revelation 
before he is ready for his very largest work; and still, 
in the face of that revelation, he will cry out, after 
his old style, "Not so, Lord!" throwing, as was his 
wont, his corrections into the face of Christ's revela- 
tions. "Not so, Lord! for nothing common or un- 
clean hath at an}' time entered into my mouth." 
True Jew! True disciple! Denying and converted ! 
Correcting and corrected ! Noble ! Abased ! Shrink- 
ing! Daring! Impulsively resisting, yet consider- 
ately following, the guidance of the Holy Spirit! 
We are inclined to tears, and we are forced to 
admiration, while we rank him among the greatest 
and truest of our human brothers and leaders. 

Imperatively the voice from the vision answered, 
"What God hath cleansed, that call not thou com- 
mon or unclean." The echoes of this imperative 
voice were still sounding through his soul, while 
another voice was calling at the gate, and saying, 
"Is Simon, whose surname is Peter, lodged here?" 
God's plans had come together as hand locks hand, 
and on the morrow Peter went with them, "doubting 
nothing." 

It would be hard to find a nobler representative 
than Cornelius in the person of whom the Gentile 
world might lay claim to the blessings of the Father's 
new kingdom. He is a worthy leader of the Gentile 
hosts, who through faith in Christ have "subdued 
kingdoms and wrought righteousness." None of the 
centurions who are mentioned in the New Testament 



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115 



are ignoble, and Cornelius stands foremost among 
them. His character is sketched in four words: he is 
devout, God-fearing, charitable, prayerful. But this 
bold outline gains immensely in vividness when we 
look beyond to the awful background on which it is 
drawn. From the thousands of gods in the Roman 
Pantheon, representatives of the vanities, lusts, 
cruelties, and idolatries of all the world, this man 
turned to the worship of Jehovah, gathering as he 
could from the Jews around him accurate notions 
of the supreme and holy Deity. In the midst of a 
nation thronged with millions of human chattels he 
made his servants members of his praying household. 
Living among a vindictive and hateful people his 
hand was open to them with alms; and though he 
might naturally have been superciliously proud of 
his Roman name and lineage, he is nevertheless so 
humble as to send for spiritual guidance to a Jew 
lodged with a tanner. 

At last these two Spirit-led, chosen men, meet. 
It is a scene for an artist. The Roman soldier, clad 
in breast-plate and helmet, falls down to worship 
at the feet of the fisherman Jew. The Jew, no longer 
thinking of Gentile pollution, lifts him up, saying: 
" Stand up; I myself also am a man." And so side 
by side they walk, entering into the house, mutually 
explaining all that their visions had not explained, 
the soldier of the cross and the soldier of the sword, 
brothers already potentially, their hearts swelling 
with mutual love under the inspiration of hopes 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



reaching heaven-high and world-wide. This talking 
and walking with the centurion, and entering into 
his house is the beginning of the sublime pageantry 
of Christ's international, blood-bought, Spirit-born, 
brotherhood. 

The apostle began his sermon before the centurion 
and his household by the frank statement of the last 
revelation that he was ever to receive. His first 
great revelation was that Jesus was the Christ, the 
Son of the living God. Of this he was finally con- 
vinced by the resurrection of Jesus. His second 
great revelation was the plan of salvation as an- 
nounced to the inquiring believers on the day of 
Pentecost: "Repent and be baptized, every one of 
you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission 
of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
Spirit." His third great revelation he announces 
in these words: 44 1 perceive that God is no respecter 
of persons; but in every nation he that feareth him 
and worketh righteousness is accepted with him." 
In this he reached the summit of the mountain up 
which he had been traveling, and stumbling, from 
the day that the Savior called him to leave his boats 
and nets. Higher in the ways of revelation it is not 
possible to go. The Apostle Paul knew a certain one 
caught up into the third heaven, but what he saw 
there it was unlawful to tell in this world. 

Aside from this final revelation, standing as an 
introduction, the apostle's sermon is the same that 
he preached on the day of Pentecost, modified only 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



117 



in minor details to meet the needs of the occasion. 
While he was declaring the resurrection of Jesus, 
and his reigning and judicial authority, and the 
remission of sins through faith in him, the Holy 
Spirit fell upon the hearers precisely as upon the 
apostles and others on the day of Pentecost. This 
was at once the Savior's sign of acceptance as re- 
garded the Gentiles, and his seal of approval as re- 
garded the apostle's preaching to them. Immediately 
it enabled the Apostle Peter to challenge the adverse 
opinion of his Jewish brethen, the six who had ac- 
companied him, as to the acceptance of the Gentiles, 
and afterward, as recorded in the eleventh chapter, 
to offer to the Jerusalem church such a defense of 
his course as could not be gainsaid. Here is the 
challenge: "Can any man forbid water, that these 
should not be baptized, who have received the Holy 
Spirit as well as we?" Breaking the silence that 
followed, "he commanded them to be baptized in 
the name of the Lord." Evidently the apostle 
places baptism here as the culmination of conversion. 
It was the last step of the pathway that Cornelius 
traveled entering the church. If the six Jewish 
brethren wished to challenge the reception of Cor- 
nelius into the church, there at the waters of baptism 
was the place to do it. There and then they should 
speak, or forever hold their peace. They dared 
not demand circumcision, they dared not refuse 
baptism, and without the former, and upon the 
basis of the latter, they accepted the fellowship of 



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the Gentiles, "tarrying certain days" with them, 
and "eating with them." All this is indicative of 
the place that baptism held in the economy of the 
first church, and in the minds of the first Christians. 

By the conversion of Cornelius a great mystery 
was made plain. The Apostle Paul refers to this as 
a dispensation of the grace of God, and as a revela- 
tion, "which," he says, "in other ages was not 
made known unto the sons of men as it is now 
revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by 
the Spirit, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, 
and of the same body, and partakers of his promise 
in Christ by the Gospel" (Eph. iii. 5, 6). To the 
generous souls among the Israelites it must have 
seemed surpassingly strange that God should cast 
off the myriads of the nations around them. Isaiah 
and Jeremiah could understand it only in view of 
an ultimately extended reception of them. "It is 
a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to 
raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the 
preserved of Israel; I will also give thee for a light 
to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation 
to the ends of the earth" (Isa. xlix.6). This large- 
hearted longing of Isaiah, boldly and beautifully 
expressed, is representative of such Old Testament 
passages as seem to stand in conflict with the exclu- 
siveness shown in God's choice of Abraham, and the 
permanence of the Jewish cult and rites, which over 
and over again are enjoined upon the people for- 
ever. There stood the mystery of nations rejected 



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119 



of God; hated by all but all of the chosen people; 
yearned over by few; yet with manifold blessings 
promised to them in the very covenant, which, by the 
exclusiveness of its carnal ordinances, seemed to 
cut them off forever. To a people worshiping the 
letter of their law rather than its spirit; mistaking 
their own divinely-appointed office as an end within 
itself; supposing that their ceremonial types and 
shadows were the eternal substance of spiritual 
things; mistaking their promised Messiah for a 
greater Moses to match and over-match the Caesars ; 
failing to perceive that his fulfillment of the law 
was the end of it rather than the confirmation of 
it; schooled by generations of a history mostly mourn- 
ful to a life and death loyalty to the customs of 
their fathers,— to such a people it was an inscruta- 
ble mystery that the cast-off peoples were ever in 
any way to be made one with themselves. The 
estrangement between Jews and Gentiles seemed 
incurable; their mutual hatred, ineradicable; and 
the wall between them, impregnable. But lo! 
Cornelius is converted, and to those who, like the 
apostles Peter and Paul, have the eyes to see it, 
the mystery is solved. That conversion was a 
revelation and a revolution. Therein "old things 
passed away; all things became new." In the flesh 
of Jesus there was "abolished the enmity, even the 
law of commandments contained in ordinances," and 
in him there was made "of twain, one new man." 
We are to bring this miracle and this mystery face 



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to face, and we are to gaze upon the former till the 
latter is no more. Only so can we understand the 
conflict that was soon to be waged in the first church, 
for, mournfully enough, the conversion that brought 
peace to the noble Roman became a storm center 
in the kingdom of his new-found Master. 

In summary : 1st. The tenth chapter of The Acts 
presents us with a parallel to Pentecost. There is 
the same preacher, the same supervision of the Holy 
Spirit, the same presentation of Christ, the same 
miracle of conversion. Yet there is an advance 
upon Pentecost. 

2d. It presents us with a good man, non-Chris- 
tian, non-Jew, made a Christian, but not made a 
Jew. 

3d. It presents us, therefore, with a revelation 
which was a revolution, and with a conversion that 
unveiled the mystery of ages. 

4th. It presents us with the Apostle Peter's path 
of progress till he reached perfection in revelation. 



VI. 

THE FIRST GENTILE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 



"By revelation he made known unto me the mystery, which in 
other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now 
revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit ; that the 
Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers 
of his promise in Christ by the Gospel." — Eph. Hi. 3-6. 

"It was from Antioch, and with the co-operation of its church, 
that Paul undertook his great missionary tours into Asia Minor 
and Greece. "—Schaff. 

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VI. 



THE FIRST GENTILE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

"Now they that were scattered abroad upon the persecution that 
arose about Stephen traveled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and 
Antioch, preaching the word to none but unto Jews only. And 
some of them were men of Cyprus, and Cyrene, which, when they 
were come to Antioch, spake unto the Greeks (Revised Version), 
preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with 
them, and a great number turned unto the Lord." — Acts xi. 19-22. 

Antioch was the third city in the Eornan empire, 
Rome being first, and Alexandria second. Eastward 
it commanded the region lying toward the fertile val- 
leys of the Tigris and the Euphrates; northward, 
Asia Minor and the highways leading thence to 
Rome; westward, by way of the Orontes, the shores 
of the Mediterranean. As an evangelistic center, 
Antioch had points of advantage over any of her 
sister cities. Babylon was too far to the east to 
influence the growing western world. Alexandria 
had Egypt for her background, but the world's 
progress did not lie in that direction; and, be- 
sides, that city was so speculative as to spoil 
Christianity almost as soon as she had received it. 
Jerusalem was doomed to destruction by reason of 
its exclusiveness. Antioch was cosmopolitan. All 
things considered, it was a strategic point to be 
gained and held by the Christian faith, and from 
which to propagate that faith. 

123 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



Nature had adorned Antioch with the splendor of 
rivers and the majesty of mountains; commerce had 
poured her wealth into it, and the Seleucid princes 
had spared no pains to enrich it with the works of 
human grandeur and art. Eenan, as quoted by Prof. 
B. A. Hinsdale, in his "Jewish Christian Church," 
has given the following description of its popula- 
tion: 

"It was an inconceivable medley of merry- 
andrews, quacks, buffoons, magicians, miracle-mon- 
gers, sorcerers, priests, impostors; a city of races, 
games, dances, processions, fetes, debauches, of un- 
bridled luxury, of all the follies of the East, of the 
most unhealthy superstitions, and of the fanaticisms 
of the orgy. The great corso which traversed the 
city was like a theater, where rolled, day after day, 
the waves of a trifling, light-headed, changeable, 
insurrection-loving populace — a populace sometimes 
spirituel, occupied with romps, parodies, squibs, im- 
pertinences of all sorts." 

But there were solider elements in its make-up as 
indicated by the presence of its Eoman soldiers, and 
a colony of Jews, of whom Nicolas, the proselyte, 
was a representative. Cicero speaks of the city as 
"distinguished by men of learning and the cultiva- 
tion of the arts." Certainly the dark and trifling 
side of the picture of its people is relieved by the 
readiness with which they received Christianity, and 
the energy with which they propagated it. In the 
time of Chrysostom, the population was estimated at 



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125 



200,000, more than half of whom were Christians. 

The persecution that followed the death of 
Stephen had its beneficent side. As the eagle stirs 
up her young, and tosses them from the nest, com- 
pelling them to fly, so by the hand of persecution the 
children of the " Mother Church " became missiona- 
ries, and Phenice received the Gospel, and Cyprus, 
and Antioch, and doubtless many intervening cities. 
This missionary work was at the first confined to the 
Jews only. But the men of Cyprus and Cyrene, 
"when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the 
Greeks, preaching the Lord Jesus." Upon the more 
liberal-minded Jews, who had been brought up in 
lands foreign to Judsea, the leaven of the Gospel was 
having its legitimate effect. Love was allying itself 
with the fundamental sense of humanity in passing 
beyond the arbitrary lines of clannishness and nation- 
alism. So when they came to this great city and 
saw its needs, they no longer refrained, but boldly 
preached to the Greeks as well as to the Jews. 
These missionaries seem to have reached by a more 
natural course the conclusion which, in the case of 
the Apostle Peter, came by the way of miracle. Had 
they themselves entertained any doubt as to the 
correctness of their course, the Lord stood ready to 
remove it, for "his hand was with them," and a 
great number turned to him. "By their fruits ye 
shall know them." When the preaching of the 
Word brings forth beneficent results in lives re- 
newed, it is not becoming to censure seeming irreg- 



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ularities in its presentation. As the Lord himself 
came to the defense of his faithful and aggressive 
missionaries in Antioch, so he has risen up in de- 
fense to-day of his missionaries in India, and China, 
and Japan, and Africa, and in hundreds of the 
islands of the sea. From the standpoints merely of 
the humanity and the ethics involved in missionary 
enterprises, and the evident transformations of pagan 
peoples in personal conduct and social customs, the 
mouths of the cynics should forever be stopped. 
And when we add to this those spiritual and eternal 
considerations upon which our Savior placed so 
much of the emphasis of his life and teachings, it 
becomes a matter simply of ignorant and heartless 
impertinence to seek to throw so much as a straw in 
the way of missionary progress. Let the adverse 
critics of missions do three things : let them in the 
first place remember the ancient missions from which 
have resulted, by the lapse of centuries, the present 
conditions of civilization in Europe and America, — 
missions which began precisely here in Antioch, were 
carried forward by the immortal labors of the Apos- 
tle Paul into Asia Minor and Europe, and thence still 
further extended among the Goths and Saxons and 
Angles, by such as Ulfilas and Augustine and Columba 
and Boniface; in the second place, let them ponder 
the statistical tables of modern missions standing 
boldly out from an awful background of heathen 
and idolatrous conditions, where hatred and lust 
and superstition rankle within, and lechery an'd 



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127 



lies and clannishness and infanticide and widow-burn* 
ing and priestcraft and tribal wars and cannibalism 
rage without; — let them note the transformations 
that have passed over such greater islands as Mada- 
gascar and Borneo and Sumatra and Celebes and 
New Zealand, and at least three hundred of the 
lesser islands of the Pacific Ocean; and the revolu- 
tion in Japan, the result of Christian influences; and 
the missionary explorations of Africa, together with 
the conversion of whole tribes; and the encouraging 
advances that have been made in China, where the 
50,000 native Christians are but an earnest of the 
millions confidently expected by the most experi- 
enced missionaries ; and the still greater advances in 
India, where, at the present rate of increase, another 
century will see 100,000,000 of native Christians; in 
short, let them consider the great and beneficent 
work that has already been accomplished, remember- 
ing, meanwhile, that the majestic enterprise of 
world-wide evangelization has but just begun; and in 
the third place, let them pray, really, devoutly pray, 
"Thy kingdom come;" — then there will be an end 
of unfriendly criticism. 

These unnamed and unknown men of Cyprus and 
Cyrene, who, when they had got as far as Antioch, 
dared to break away from traditionalism and do an 
irregular thing, preaching to the "Greeks," are not 
only the worthy heralds of the Savior, who in the 
glory of his resurrection state stood up in a more 
than manlike boldness of originality and sublimity of 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



conception, commanding them to do this very thing; 
but they are also the worthy forerunners of Paul 
and Barnabas and Ulfilas and Augustine and Carey 
and Morrison and Moffat and Martyn and Living- 
stone and Zinzendorf, and a great host which no 
man can number, as nameless here as these men of 
Cyprus and Cyrene themselves, but not nameless, we 
know, where the inerrant record of prophets and 
apostles and heroes aud martyrs is kept. 

At last the news of this irregularity in Antioch 
reaches the church in Jerusalem, and again the 
Lord's plans are seen to meet as hand locks hand. 
By the conversion of Cornelius, and the Apostle 
Peter's explanation and defense of his conduct in 
admitting this Gentile to full fellowship, the Jerusa- 
lem church was made ready for the news from Anti- 
och. When the Apostle Peter completed his de- 
fense, saying, "What was I that I could withstand 
God?" they held their peace, and glorified God, say- 
ing, "Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted 
repentance unto life." It is wonderful how these 
Jewish Christians were overcoming their abhorrence 
of the Gentiles. Properly weighed, it would be hard 
to find a more fraternal and progressive sentiment 
than this. Here is the expression of a breadth of 
brotherhood that could have sprung only from the 
life and teachings of Christ, and that could have been 
nurtured into ripeness only by the Holy Spirit. By 
the side of it that high-sounding Americanism, "Life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," pales into a 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



129 



mere political shibboleth, for we do not live it as we 
ought; and the turbulent Frenchmen of the days 
of the reign of terror, shouting, "Liberty, fraternity 
and equality!" while they were cutting off one 
another's heads, have given us, by way of contrast 
with the action of the Jerusalem church, the most 
fearful exhibition of the sentiments of liberty and 
equality, shorn of the love of Jesus and the potency 
of the Holy Spirit. 

Instead, therefore, of condemning the progressive 
and even revolutionary work of the Antioch mission- 
aries, the Jerusalem church found it in full keeping 
with the work done at Csesarea, for which they had 
already glorified God. Instead of coming upon them 
as a shock, and creating a revulsion against the 
Gentiles, the report came rather as " good news 
from a far country, and as cold water to a thirsty 
soul." And surely it is competent to suppose that 
once more they glorified God, and again joined in 
the wondrous acclaim, " Then hath God also to the 
Gentiles granted repentance unto salvation." 

As to their action, we are not left to speculation; 
they did a beautiful thing. " They sent forth Barna- 
bas that he should go as far as Antioch." Why 
Barnabas? ' Why not James the legalist, the rigid 
and ascetic Jew? Why not the Apostle Peter him- 
self? No, they send the "Son of Consolation," the 
large-hearted, liberal-handed exhorter of the church. 
He is the man who sold his land and gave the price 
of it to the church; he is the man who introduced 

9 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



Paul to the church, and vouched for the genuineness 
of his conversion, and stood by him in his disputes 
with the Grecians. Why should they send this "Son 
of Consolation? " Had the Jerusalem church no 
professional theologian, with a hard and fast system 
of dogmatics, that she could send? Had she no pro- 
fessional watch-dogs of the faith, no heresy-sniffers, 
no arch-inquisitors that she could send to Antioch 
to spy out their irregularities? Where was her Tor- 
quemada? Where at the very least was her "Angel- 
ical Doctor," with his "Method of Aristotle," and 
his twenty-three folio volumes of speculative theol- 
ogy? Why not send him to show the young converts 
of Antioch whether realism or nominalism was the 
true philosophy, or to show them the difference be- 
tween the satisfaction to justice that Jesus wrought 
in his sufferings and the merit of his obedience to 
the law, "by virtue of which the redeemed are enti- 
tled to the rewards of eternity? " O surely they will 
send some one who can logic-chop the scaffolding of 
the new temple they are building in Antioch, and see 
that it is all done the way the grandfathers did it, 
and " fashion it according to the pattern shown in 
the Mount!" Surely the Mother Church will see 
that the Antioch Church is made from her own stere- 
otype plates, and she will demand that there be no 
innovations, no progress, no liberty, and if things do 
not go along the chalk-line of legalism she will issue 
high-sounding documents with damnatory clauses, 
and grow furious with the thunders of her excommu- 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



131 



nications! Where were the Pecksniffs of the Jeru- 
salem church, the non-progressives, always suffering 
from an attack of conscience, the anti-brethren, who 
would make a test of fellowship of circumcision, or 
of a music box, or of a syllogism, or of their own 
deified dogmatism? O thanks to the Mother Church! 
She had such characters, as we shall find, but she 
kept them as long as she could in the dark, where they 
belong. She refused to appoint them to disturb the 
peace of the young Gentile church. If they will go 
on such a mission of infernalism they must go self- 
appointed, as such characters for the most part do. 

It is a mission of fellowship, not of censorship; a 
mission of love, and not of law, that the Mother 
Church has to perform. And out of her love, not 
her legalism, she sends her "Son of Consolation," 
his credentials being that he was a son of consolation, 
a good man, full of the Holy Spirit, and of faith. In 
addition to the Apostle Paul's panegyric in the thir- 
teenth chapter of I. Corinthians it may be added, 
Christian love is not blind ; she sees ; she has com- 
mon sense ; she does not send out a misfit of bigotry 
upon her fraternal ministries, but she chooses with 
clearest insight the precisely fitted minister for such 
offices. When this good man came to Antioch 
and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and, true to 
his character and his mission, he exhorted them (he 
was only an exhort er) that with purpose of heart 
they should cleave unto the Lord. 

In this exhortation Barnabas justifies his mission. 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



Whatever other religions may demand, the one essen- 
tial of Christianity is this cleaving to the Lord 
Christ. Personal loyalty to his personal Lordship is 
the sum total of his demands upon us, and it is also 
his graciously extended privilege to us. To cleave to 
Christ is to cleave to all that is Christly, and that is 
atonement. The form of our confession, the sub- 
stance of our creed, and the rule of our lives as 
Christians is practically this: " O Christ, where thou 
goest I will go ; where thou lodgest I will lodge ; thy 
people shall be my people, and thy God, my God." 
Or this, " I am persuaded that neither life, nor death, 
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, 
nor any other creature shall be able to separate us 
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our 
Lord." Or this, 

"Alone, O Love ineffable! 
Thy saving name is given; 
To turn aside from thee is hell, 
To walk with thee is heaven. 

"Apart from thee all gain is loss, 
All labor vainly done ; 
The solemn shadow of thy cross 
Is better than the sun, 

"Not thine the bigot's partial plea, 
Nor thine the zealot's ban; 
Thou well canst spare a love to thee 
Which ends in hate of man. 

1 ' O Lord and Master of us all ! 
Whate'er our name or sign, 
"We own thy sway, we hear thy call, 
We test our lives by thine." 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



133 



Under the leadership of this good man the church 
grew: "Much people was added unto the Lord." 
Enlargement in one direction called for enlargement 
in another. This church must have an assistant pas- 
tor, or, more properly, above all other pastors it 
must have one fit to be their leader. " Then de- 
parted Barnabas to Tarsus to seek for Saul; and 
when he had found him he brought him to Antioch. 
And it came to pass, that a whole year they assem- 
bled themselves with the church and taught much 
people." Barnabas knew Paul by companionship 
with him better than we know him by his epistles, 
and he chose him for that place as inerrantly as a 
great general chooses his captains for strategic 
encounters. As he had introduced Saul to the 
church in Jerusalem, so now he introduces him to 
the Antioch church, and here among Gentiles, among 
Christians mostly Gentile, the young Jewish zealot 
and rabbi, the Pharisee of Pharisees, the student of 
Gamaliel, finds the basis of his life work. So sur- 
prising are the destinies marked out by God for his 
chosen workmen! If the church could always have 
some good Barnabas for its adviser! If Barnabas 
could always find the Paul suitable for the place ! If 
Paul and Barnabas could always content themselves 
to be teaching much people, and not seek to be 
"lording it over God's heritage! " If the church 
were always willing to be thus taught and shep- 
herded ! — how much foolish and unlearned talk 
might be spared about "the eldership," and "the 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



ruling elders," and 44 the deacons," and "the bish- 
ops," and "the presbyters," and their respective 
functions and official dignities ! Up to this point we 
have heard nothing about the bishops and deacons of 
the church in Antioch. Possibly they were there, 
possibly not. Of one thing, however, we may be 
sure: where Paul and Barnabas were, and such 
44 prophets and teachers" as were associated with 
them (xiii. 1), the teaching function eclipsed all 
else. Always in the church the maximum of intelli- 
gence means the minimum of surveillance; the 
maximum of love, the minimum of law; and the 
maximum of fraternity, the minimum of machinery. 

4 4 And it came to pass . . . that the disciples 
were called Christians first in Antioch." At last it 
began to dawn upon the world that here was a dis- 
tinct people, neither Jews nor Gentiles. In Jeru- 
salem they seemed to be merely a sect of the Jews ; 
here in Antioch they attained to distinctiveness, and 
a name for them was inevitable. The world names 
its genera and species as naturally and necessarily as 
Adam named the beasts of Eden. The naming of 
the disciples, therefore, indicates progress; it marks 
the appearance of a new species; it is one of the 
milestones of the earliest church history. Is there 1 
nothing in names? There is a distinctive move- 
ment back of every distinctive name. History makes 
no mistake in this matter. Let the man who loves 
the union of Christ's people and yet pleads that his 
denominational name means nothing, ask history 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



135 



if, like an insane mother, she has given a name 
where no really distinct child existed. 

With reference to one another, Christ's followers 
were called brethren; with reference to God, chil- 
dren ; with reference to their character, saints ; with 
reference to their Master, disciples; with reference 
to the Savior, believers; as distinguished from the 
world by the sum total of their relations to Christ, 
Christians. None of these names are used in the 
New Testament as the names of the church, or of 
any of its congregations. There is no 4 6 Brethren 
Church," or "Children's Church," or "Saints' 
Church," or "Disciples' Church," or "Christian 
Church." Taken together, the Christians in the 
world were designated by pleonasm "the Church of 
God," or "the Church of Christ," but most simply 
and most frequently as " the church," there being of 
course but one; the congregations of Christians were 
designated always by location, never, never, never by 
denomination. There were no denominations, and 
our whole system of isms and their denominational 
namings is abnormal. There were the churches at 
Antioch, and Corinth, and Ephesus, and Smyrna, 
and Laodicea, and Thyatira, but in every case it was 
simply and sublimely and unmistakably " the church" 
there. It is our denominational environment that is 
crowding us into such expediencies as "Disciple" 
with a big D to it, and " The Christian Church " with 
a big the before it. At normal, if Christians ever 
get back to that condition, they will simply say " the 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



church," and then proceed to give its place name 
rather than its party name. There must be denomin- 
ationalism in denominational names; there may be in 
the names "Brethren," "Saints," "Disciples," and 
even "Christian." Sectarianism is first in the spirit 
and then in the name, and it may be in the spirit in 
spite of the name, for the very sink of sectarian 
blasphemy consists in wearing exclusively the name 
of Christ for the purpose of browbeating all the rest 
of the world. It is axiomatic that all Christians can 
unite in Christ, and in the name of Christ, and it is a 
corollary that there is no other basis of union. 
Their creed must be the creed of Christ; their name 
the name of Christ; their spirit the spirit of Christ. 
No doubt sacrifices must be made of many a dogma, 
and pet polity, and cherished name, and denomin- 
ational whim, and the haughty looks of lineage. But 
then God is able of the stones to raise up seed unto 
Luther, and Calvin was not crucified for us, nor were 
we baptized in the name of supralapsarianism. And 
beyond all else, when we see others casting out devils 
in Christ's name we must have charity enough not to 
anathematize them because they follow not with us. 

In a double direction "sweet charity" was bridg- 
ing the chasm between Jew and Gentile. Out of 
love the church in Jerusalem gave Barnabas to 
Antioch. But there came forewarnings of a famine, 
and Judea seems to have been especially afflicted. 
Out of love the Antioch church, "every man 
according to his ability, determined to send relief 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



137 



unto the brethren who dwelt in Judaea. Which 
also they did, and sent it to the elders by the hands 
of Barnabas and Saul." Christianity is full of sur- 
prises, and this is one of them, that there should 
have been in such an age, between peoples so sun- 
dered by birth and environment, and by every 
antipathy that can spring from such breeding 
grounds of hatred as the politics and religions of 
that day were, such a reciprocity of love. Above 
there is given Kenan's description of the population 
of Antioch, an unlikely conglomerate of human 
creatures surely from which to expect a show of 
substantial charity toward foreigners. But place 
beside it this paragraph from Mr. Charles Loring 
Brace's ''History of Humane Progress:" "Under 
the old Greek and Roman habits of mind, the 
stranger was mainly looked upon as a barbarian and 
enemy. Something of the same savagery, which 
in Stanley's travels through Africa made almost 
every new tribe he met with at once attack him 
like a dangerous wild beast, animated the ancient 
races, both barbarous and civilized, in their rela- 
tions to foreigners. Stoicism indeed cultivated 
a more humane feeling toward the learned and re- 
fined; but the masses of the people in the ancient 
world were full of prejudices and hostility against 
those not of their own race or country. It is true 
that the Roman Empire, with its imperial unity, 
tended to melt different peoples together under one 
rule, and strangers and enemies gradually became 



138 STUDIES IN ACTS 

only those outside the limits of this grand domain. 
Toward those, however, the old barbaric feeling 
and custom were strong as ever. That expression 
in Plautus, 'A man is a wolf to the man he does 
not know,' is probably an echo of an old Eoman 
proverb, and utters a common sentiment of the 
Italian peoples." 

Add this further paragraph from the same writer: 
"The world never needed charity and compassion 
as it did in the centuries just following Christ. 
The irresponsible and despotic authority of Borne 
had stripped some of the richest provinces of the 
ancient world of every vestige of wealth for the 
sake of adding to the incredible extravagance and 
display of the imperial court and city. The system 
of taxation in distant communities was like that 
in the states of European Turkey in this century. 
It soon left nothing to the unfortunate peasants, 
and mortgaged their harvests years before. Nor 
did the taxes always reach the imperial exactor. 
Knavish tax-gatherers, peculating officials, and local 
rings, plundered the money which was rung from 
half -starved farmers. Incessant wars and conquests 
added to the misery of the laboring classes; and 
slavery, as we have shown, depressed the industry 
and wasted the means of the whole empire. Vast 
masses of proletaires were gathered in the cities, 
especially in the imperial capital; and poverty, 
orphanage, abandonment of children, with wide- 



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139 



spread pauperism prevailed, as they have scarcely 
ever been known in the history of the world." 

Among the systems of philosophy of those times 
Stoicism is reckoned as the loftiest and most 
humane; with many it passed for religion as well; 
but it left its disciples saying actually: "Trouble 
not thyself; thy neighbor sins, but he sins for 
himself; " and practically also, trouble not thyself; 
thy neighbor suffers, but he suffers for himself. 
Into this world of tribal pride and corresponding 
scorn; of wars and conquests and slavery and 
rapacious taxation; of the indifference of the Stoic 
and the wantonness of the Epicure; into this wolf- 
like world, three hundred years* before it could 
claim a hospital for the sick or an asylum for the 
deficient, came the spirit of Jesus, breathing peace 
and helpfulness. The Greeks had their fabled god- 
dess of Fortune, bearing high her cornu-copia, but 
Christianity is that goddess in reality. Fortune 
and plenty spring from love. Regardless of lati- 
tude and longitude Christian love pours out her 
plenty with actual human hands on famine-smitten, 
and fever-smitten, and plague, war, flood, and 
storm-smitten spots of earth. And what is more 
wonderful, over all but infinite desert distances 
of human alienation she throws her spell of peace 
and brotherhood. Agabus, the brother prophet, 
foretold the sufferings of Christian Jews; Christian 
Greeks immediately responded, sending relief, 
66 every man according to his ability." 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



The Jerusalem church began with a community 
of goods; it was her form of sisterly love. The 
Antioch church began with a collection for for- 
eign sufferers; and that was her form of sisterly 
love. "Thou," cries St. Augustine, apostrophizing 
the church, "thou bringest within the bond of 
mutual love every relationship of kindred, every 
alliance of affinity; thou unitest citizen to citizen, 
nation to nation, man to man, not only in society, 
but in fraternity. Thou teachest kings to seek 
the welfare of their peoples, and peoples to be 
subject to kings. . . . Thou showest how to all 
love is due, and injury to none."* 

Sixteen years later the Apostle Paul, meditating 
upon a similar exhibition of charity by the Gentile 
churches of Macedonia and Achaia toward "the 
poor saints that were at Jerusalem," exclaims: 
"Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift." 

* Lux Mundi, page 420. 



vn. 

THE FIRST MARTYR APOSTLE 



"Then came to him the mother of the sons of Zebedee with her 
sons, worshiping him, and 'asking a certain thing of him. And he 
said unto her, What wouldest thou? And she said unto him, Com- 
mand that these my two sons may sit, one on tby right hand, and 
one on thy left hand in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, 
Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink the cup that I am 
about to drink? They say unto him, We are able. He saith unto 
them, My cup indeed ye shall drink; but to sit on my right hand 
and on my left is not mine to give, but it is for them for whom it 

hath been prepared of my Father."— Matt. xx. 20-23 

142 



VII. 



THE FIRST MARTYR APOSTLE. 

"Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to 
vex certain of the church. And he killed James the brother of J ohn 
with the sword." — Acts xii. 1, 2. 

James was the first of the apostles to seal his tes- 
timony with his life. Perhaps he was prominent in 
some of the more public functions of the church, 
sitting thus by the side of Christ, and therefore 
smitten. Perhaps, being a " Boanerges," he was ter- 
ribly pronounced in his profession. Perhaps, having 
been one of the Savior's inner circle of three, he was 
for that reason more a mark for the enemies of 
Christ, the greater love entailing the greater danger. 
But conjectures apart, the fact is he was first, and 
his death "pleased the Jews." 

The death of James is a tragedy responding to a 
prophecy. The mother of James and John, vanity 
led, and leading her sons, asked that they might sit, 
the one on the right hand, and the other on the left, 
of the Lord in his glory. "Can you drink the cup 
that I shall drink?" "We can." "You shall in- 
deed." . . . "And he killed James the brother 
of John with the sword." Thus the Savior's proph- 
ecy passes into somber history, and the young man's 
vanity is forever forgotten in the true man's baptism 

143 



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of blood. It is ever thus that the Savior, rebuking 
our magisterial vanities, appoints us to ministerial 
functions, demanding that we shall come with our 
lives in our hands, if we would be worthy of places 
on his right and on his left. There were immensi- 
ties of differences between the Son of God and these 
" earthly vessels," yet in the day of trial they proved 
themselves the worthy repositories of his heavenly 
treasure. They hazarded their lives, they resisted 
unto blood, they drank the cup, they have their 
places at his side. 

James is a representative of all the apostles. Not 
one of them denied Jesus after his resurrection, and 
to most of them sooner or later Christ's cup of death 
was presented, and they partook of it "in remem- 
brance of him," a holy eucharist of evidence and love, 
sealed by blood. 

John, own brother to James, lived to a great old 
age, and though his was not a martyr's death, yet in 
his tarrying he tasted of deeper bitterness in the 
persecutions that assailed the church, and the names 
of Nero and Domitian are sufficient to recall the 
crowd of mournful metaphors he has left us of the 
terrible times in which he saw his "little children" 
perishing under fearful tribulations. 

Herod Agrippa I. was the son of Aristobulus, and 
grandson of Herod the Great. The emperors Cali- 
gula and Claudius had restored to him the kingdom 
of his grandfather, consisting of the tetrarchies of 
Herod Philip, and Herod Antipas, and Lysanias, and 



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145 



the provinces of Judaea and Samaria. We may asso- 
ciate and execrate the remembrance of the three 
Herods as follows: Herod the Great, murderer of 
babes; Herod Antipas, murderer of the Baptist; 
Herod Agrippa, murderer of James. Renan calls 
Agrippa a vile Oriental, and says that, "In return 
for the lessons of baseness and perfidy he had given 
at Rome, he obtained for himself Samaria and 
Judaea, and for his brother Herod the kingdom of 
Chalcis. He left at Rome the worst memories, and 
the cruelties of Caligula were attributed in part to 
his counsels." "The orthodox (Jews) had in him a 
king after their own heart." His income from 
rapacious taxation was the equivalent of two million 
dollars annually. His well nigh absolute and tyran- 
nous power is shown in his oppression of Tyre and 
Sidon, whose commerce he had impeded if not 
ruined, and by his favoritism to Beyrout. Evidently, 
this Herod is one of the monsters of history, " crafty, 
selfish, extravagant, vainglorious, unprincipled and 
licentious." In his "Napoleon le Petit," Victor 
Hugo has the following paragraph, colossal in mer- 
ited sarcasm: 

" History has its tigers. The historians, those im- 
mortal keepers of ferocious animals, exhibit to the 
nations that imperial menagerie. Tacitus has seized 
and confined eight or ten of these tigers in the iron 
cages of his style. Behold them! they are frightful 
and superb; their spots constitute a part of their 

beauty. This is Nimrod, the hunter of men ; that is 
10 



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Busiris, the tyrant of Egypt; that other is Phalaris, 
who caused men to be baked alive in a brazen bull, 
that he might hear the bull bellow; here is 
Ahasuerus, who tore the scalps from the heads of 
the seven Maccabees, and caused them to be roasted 
alive; there is Nero, the burner of Rome, who 
wrapped the Christians in wax and bitumen, and set 
them on fire like torches; there is Domitian; here is 
Caracalla; there is Heliogabalus; that other is Corn- 
modus, who has this merit the more in the horror 
he inspires, that he was the son of Marcus Aurelius; 
there are the Czars; those, the Sultans; there go 
the popes, — behold among them the tiger Borgia! 
see Philip called the Good, as the Furies were called 
Eumenides; see Richard III., sinister and deformed; 
behold, with his great face and huge belly, Henry 
VIII., who, of five wives that he had, murdered 
three! see Christiern II., the Nero of the North; 
behold Philip II., the demon of the South! They 
are frightful; hear them roar; consider them one 
after the other. The historian brings them out 
before you; the historian exhibits them, furious and 
terrible, at the side of the cage, opens for you their 
jaws, lets you see their teeth, shows you their claws. 
You can say of every one of them, 'It is a royal 
tiger.' In truth they have been taken upon their 
thrones. History leads them forth across the ages. 
She takes care that they shall not die ; they are her 
tigers." 

Victor Hugo neglects to name him, but Herod 



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Agrippa I. belongs in this cage. In him these were 
the two requisites for a wholesale persecution of the 
church. Being a Jew, he hated Christians, and being 
a king, he had the authority to execute. In the days 
of Pontius Pilate the Jews were greatly troubled to 
get Jesus crucified, for there stood the Eoman 
authority precisely in the way of their designs. 
They could not defy it, and to placate it incurred 
risk and humiliation. But now they have a superb 
tool in that trinity of Jew, king, and monster. Per- 
haps a general persecution was planned, such as that 
under Nero, or Domitian, or Trajan, or Diocletian; 
or such as the later persecutions of Protestants by 
Eoman Catholics in France and Germany and Spain 
and Portugal and Holland, under that most awful 
and infernal perversion of the religious sentiment 
known as the Inquisition. The conditions were all 
present for such an attack. There was the religious 
intolerance of the Jews, which, like a smouldering 
flame, had been held in check for thirteen years, or 
possibly fourteen, counting from the day of Pente- 
cost; the religious and the political functions of the 
state were in accord for the first time since the birth 
of Jesus, and the king cared to make himself popu- 
lar with the multitude at the expense of a despised 
sect. If such was the plan, and if the apostles 
James and Peter were intended to be but the first 
sufferers in a general destruction, then the miracu- 
lous interference, by which Peter was saved to the 
Christians and Herod was lost to their enemies, 



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appears to us as the arm of the Lord shielding his 
young church. 

And may we not see in this kindly protection of 
his church an amazing extension of mercy and of 
evidence to the nation also? The Savior's merciful 
offer of cumulative evidence to the rebellious nation 
has been noted previously, but an attempted sum- 
mary and emphasis of it is now in place. The resur- 
rection of Jesus should have been sufficient ; to that 
is added the miracle of Pentecost; a church num- 
bering thousands, and endued with marvelous pow- 
ers of love and speech and prayer, rises up as if by 
magic; the apostles, being imprisoned, are miracu- 
lously released ; Stephen's speech is irresistible; per- 
secution itself ministers to the enlargement of the 
church, and now, in climax of evidence, if there can 
be climax after the resurrection, Peter is unaccount- 
ably delivered from prison, and Herod suffers an 
awful death. Surely in all this the Savior's pierced 
hands are still uplifted before the gaze of the nation, 
and the people are still invited to look, and believe, 
and cry out, as Thomas did, "My Lord and my 
God." Will this people never relent? Will they 
never repent? Will they forever stand in fierce 
opposition to incarnate love and reason? Will they 
persist in cherishing 6 6 the passions that make earth 
a hell?" "Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with 
iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that are cor- 
rupters : they have forsaken the Lord, they have pro- 



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149 



voked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are 
gone away backward." 

Repent or perish, was the burden of John the 
Baptist's message; it was the burden, likewise, of 
the preaching and the life of Jesus ; and his church 
was still crying out with irresistible speech, and 
wonderful growth, and miracles of prayer and de- 
liverance, Eepent or perish ! The warning is older 
than John the Baptist, and more recent also than 
Christ and his apostles. Isaiah repeats it many 
times in chapters of righteous wrath and deepest 
pathos; Jeremiah mingles it with his sobs and 
prayers and pleadings; and these greater prophets 
are joined by many a Minor Prophet, such as Micah 
and Hosea and Habakkuk, both in the sternness of 
their denunciation of sin and in the pathos of their 
plea for repentance. Gibbon in his "Decline and 
Fall of Rome," and Carlyle in his "French Revolu- 
tion," and Victor Hugo in his "Les Miserables " 
are but modern voices upraised with the mighty 
comments of history in defense and confirmation of 
the ancient prophets. 

" The Lord will roar from Zion, 
From Jerusalem will he utter his voice; 
And the pastures of the shepherds will mourn, 
And the head of Carmel will be parched." 

This from Amos is but one example of the everlast- 
ing warning against the consequences of sin. Or 
it may take this form: 



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"Rome shall perish; write that word 
On the blood that she has spilt; 
Perish, hopeless and abhorred, 
Deep in ruin as in guilt." 

Or it may take this form: "And as some spake of 
the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones 
and gifts, he said: As for these things which ye 
behold, the days will come, in the which there shall 
not be left one stone upon another that shall not 
be thrown down." When we look for the comment > 
of history upon this prediction of Jesus, and upon 
the course of the Israelites in their rejection and 
their attempted destruction of him, and in their 
rejection of his church and their attempted destruc- 
tion of it, we have only to turn to the account of 
the siege of Jerusalem and the devastation of Judsea 
by the armies of Rome in the years of 69 and 70. 

The murder of James, the arrest of Peter, and 
the intended general persecution, were steps of the 
downward way along which this nation was walking 
so consistently to ruin. The release of the Apostle 
Peter and the death of Herod were the plans of 
Providence protecting the church, and seeking to 
turn the nation from destruction. 

Peter was saved by the punctiliousness of the 
king and the prayers of the Christians. Though 
the king would murder, and murder for political 
capital, yet he would not do it during the Passover. 
This gave the opportunity for earnest and united pray- 
er in the apostle's behalf. Prayer is the language of 



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151 



extremity, and the answer to it is God's opportunity. 
When Jesus was in agony he prayed, and when 
the members of his church could lift no hand 
of help to their leader they turned to God. 
And the prayers both of the Master and of his 
church were answered, — his in resignation, theirs by 
the angel of deliverance. While they were praying 
Peter was knocking at the door, for he had con- 
sidered the thing, and he would make himself known ; 
the news should run from house to house throughout 
the whole church, and in his deliverance the hand 
of the Lord should be exalted. 

Here follows one of the strangest of the incon- 
sistencies of our poor mortal style of faith. These 
Christians believed; they prayed; they had seen 
miracle upon miracle; yet they declared the maiden 
mad who reported to them the answer to their 
prayers; they were incredulous, they said: "It is 
his angel!" Are we not of the same lineage? Do 
we not reason while we pray, counting one by one, 
and saying: Here is the limit to the Lord's hand? 
Behold the two chains, and the two soldiers, and 
the prison door, and the keepers of the door, and 
the iron gate leading to the city! No, it is impos- 
sible. We will pray, but God cannot answer that 
way. May be Herod will relent. May be the peo- 
ple will not clamor for the apostle's death. May 
be — but God can break those chains and open those 
doors easier than move the hearts of that king and 
his stubborn people. The iron gate s * opened to 



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them of his own accord," but the will of Herod 
moved not. Perhaps the Lord knows the easier 
way to the deliverance of his servants. Perhaps 
the lesser miracles astonish us most. 

The death of Herod, so simply related and so 
summarily dismissed in this chapter, is described 
at length by Josephus as follows: 44 Now when 
Agrippa had reigned three years over all Judsea, 
he came to the city of Csesarea, which was formerly 
called Strato's Tower, and there he exhibited shows 
in honor of Csesar, upon his being informed that 
there was a certain festival celebrated to make 
vows for his safety. At which festival a great 
multitude was gotten together of the principal per- 
sons and such as were of dignity thoughout his 
province. On the second day of which shows he 
put on a garment made wholly of silver and of a 
contexture truly wonderful, and came into the 
theater early in the morning, at which time the 
silver of his garment being illumined by the fresh 
reflection of the sun's rays upon it, shone out after 
a surprising manner, and was so resplendent as to 
spread a dread and shuddering over those that 
looked intently upon it, and presently his flatterers 
cried out, one from one place, and another from 
another (though not for his good) that he was a 
god. And they added: Be thou merciful unto us, 
for although we have hitherto reverenced thee only 
as a man, yet we will henceforth own thee as supe- 
rior to mortal nature. Upon this the king did 



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153 



neither rebuke them nor reject their impious flat- 
tery. But as he presently afterwards looked up 
he saw an owl sitting upon a certain rope over his 
head, and immediately understood that this bird was 
the messenger of ill tidings, as it had once been 
the messenger of good tidings to him; and fell into 
the deepest sorrow. A violent pain also arose in 
his belly, having begun with great severity. He 
therefore looked upon his friends and said : ' I 
whom you call a god am commanded presently to 
depart this life, while Providence thus reproves the 
lying words you just now said to me, and I who 
was called by you immortal am immediately to be 
hurried away to death. But I am bound to accept 
what Providence allots as it pleases God, for we 
have by no means lived ill, but in a splendid, 
happy manner.' When he said this his pain became 
violent. Accordingly he was carried into the palace, 
and the rumor went abroad everywhere that he 
would certainly die in a little while. And when 
he had been quite worn out by the pain in his 
bowels for five days, he departed this life." 

There are deaths that seem judicial. More than 
the course of nature and the force or the play of cir- 
cumstances seems to be involved in this one of 
Herod. The death of Antiochus Epiphanes is a 
striking parallel to it. The account may be found 
in the ninth chapter of the Second book of Macca- 
bees. Threatening to make Jerusalem the common 
burying-place of the Jews, he was smitten with a 



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remediless pain in the bowels; at last his flesh fell 
away; worms rose up out of him; his presence was 
unendurable to his army. Loathed by others and a 
horrer to himself, he died finally in a strange coun- 
try, in the mountains, branded by his historian as a 
murderer and a blasphemer. Charles IX. of France, 
who gave the order for the slaughter of the Hugue- 
nots, crying furiously, "Kill them all that none be 
left to reproach me," died in less than two years after 
the awful day of St. Bartholomew. Prof. Fisher 
says, "On his deathbed brief intervals of sleep were 
disturbed by horrible visions. He suffered from vio- 
lent hemorrhages, and sometimes awoke bathed in 
blood, which recalled to his mind the torrents of 
blood shed by his orders on that dreadful night. In 
his dreams he beheld the bodies of the dead, floating 
on the Seine, and heard their agonizing cries." In 
company with these one other may be named whose 
cringing and shameful death was scarcely a match 
for his mean and murderous life. Nero, who was 
saluted as a god, and the savior of the world; who 
procured the murder of his mother; who kicked his 
second wife to death; who set Rome on fire, and 
played the fiddle while he saw it burning; who lit up 
his gardens with Christians dipped in tar and set 
blazing; who polluted politics, and degraded society, 
and contaminated everything that he touched; Nero, 
political harlequin, sensualist, clown, dilettante, cow- 
ard, assassin, incendiary, persecutor, matricide, uxori- 
cide, wholesale murderer, above all others the shame, 



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155 



the terror, the brute, the fiend incarnate, — Nero, at 
last despised of Rome and deserted by his armies, 
kicked over the table where he was sitting, packed 
poison in a golden box expecting to need it, decided 
to mount the rostrum and appeal to the people, then 
threatened to rush into the Tiber, but set off instead 
to the villa of a friend, barefooted, in a faded coat, 
with masked face. Once there, cringing, whining, 
vacillating, he had not the courage to commit suicide. 
He ordered his grave digged ; he collected marble for 
its adornment, and wood for his funeral pyre, and 
begged some one to show him how to die. In the 
last moment, when the horses' hoofs were clatter- 
ing around him, and the centurion approached to 
arrest him, he held a dagger to his throat, and the 
hand of a literary slave thrust it in. As the death- 
stare came upon him they were surprised that his 
eyes should seem to be starting from his head. 
Would that of such dying wretches we could so 
much as speak in Schiller's fine phrase: 

"O thou sinner majestic, 
All thy terrible part is now played." 

But these sinners are not majestic; they are mean. 

Side by side in the twelfth chapter of Acts there 
rests the record of the first martyr apostle and the 
first king who dared to lay his hand upon an apostle. 
Peter and Paul perished under Nero, and Nero per- 
ished amidst political turmoils and personal terrors 
that were unspeakable. Jerusalem and Rome in the 



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persons of their representatives rejected the Savior 
of the world, and Josephus has painted for us in 
lurid pictures the destruction of the one, and Gibbon 
in stately chapters the fall of the other. 

"Why do the heathen rage, 
And the people imagine a vain thing? 
The kings of -the earth set themselves, 
And their rulers take counsel together 
Against the Lord, and against his Anointed, osaying, 
Let us break their bands asunder, 
And cast away their cords from us. 
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; 
The Lord shall have them in derision. 
Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings; 
Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. 
Serve the Lord with fear, 
And rejoice with trembling. 
Kiss the Son lest he be angry, 
And ye perish from the way 
When his wrath is kindled but a little. 
Blessed are all they that put their trust in him." 



VIII. 

THE FIRST FOREIGN MISSIONARIES 



"Paul as a missionary and shepherd of souls is great indeed. 
There is nothing in all antiquity to compare with the record of 
his travels and triumphs. Feeble in body, living by his toil like a 
working-man, this weaver of Tarsus enters the vast world of 
Paganism, another Alexander, to conquer the faith and the reason 
of mankind. Merely to form such a resolution was heroic. Dark- 
ness covered the earth; the peoples, to use the language of the 
prophet, were sitting in the valley and the shadow of death. Paul 
entered, alone at first, into these depths of darkness, with the Gos- 
pel torch in his hand; and wherever he went he left in his track 
from Damascus to Rome a succession of young expanding churches, 
the radiant centers of new life, the fruitful germs of modern society 
forming already in the midst of the old world. In all this, I repeat, 

there is something truly heroic." — Sabatier. 

158 



VIII. 



THE FIRST FOREIGN MISSIONARIES. 

"Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have 
appointed them." — Acts xiii. 2. 

The Holy Spirit speaks. The church obeys. With 
fasting and prayer and the laying on of hands Bar- 
nabas and Saul are sent away. Thus the Antioch 
church sacrifices her foremost teachers, and becomes 
the mother of missions. A more memorable journey, 
under feebler human auspices, and fraught with 
greater consequences was never undertaken. Many a 
king in fullness of royal trappings, with armies fol- 
lowing, has set out upon missions so mean that his- 
tory has refused to take the smallest note of them ; 
but these two poor Jews and their majestic mission 
will never be forgotten. 

The Antioch Church was herself the result of mis- 
sionary enterprise, but rather incidentally so than 
intentionally so. In her inception and growth the 
genius of Christianity outran the definite plans of its 
foremost advocates. Not the apostles and prophets 
of Jerusalem, but " men of Cyprus and Cyrene " first 
spoke to the Greeks in Antioch, " preaching the Lord 
Jesus." These men were not put forth by the Jeru- 
salem church, but by the hand of persecution, and 

159 



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their missionary work sprang from the daring spon- 
taneity of Christian love. Divine love is a divine 
leaven, and whether systematically or otherwise, it 
works wherever it is, its affinity being for man as 
man. This is the secret both of sporadic and of 
systematic missions. - 

Bat now in the mission of Barnabas and Saul there 
is definiteness of purpose and plan. The circle wid- 
ens. The church is in the pathway of progress. The 
genius of the Gospel asserts itself in a way hitherto 
untried. In the conversion of Cornelius, and the 
acknowledged legitimacy of the work among the 
Greeks of Antioch, the freedom of the Gospel from 
the forms of Mosaism has been declared. The very 
success of the Gospel in Antioch was the demonstra- 
tion of its power over Gentiles and idolaters. Thus 
the foundation for foreign work was laid, and it 
was most fitting that the church in Antioch should 
build thereon. 

It is highly significant that this new movement pro- 
ceeded under the leadership of new men. Except for 
the council in Jerusalem "the apostles and elders " 
drop out of the history. Peter is lost sight of. 
From the home of Cornelius we follow him back to 
Jerusalem ; we listen to his defense of that high deed 
of Gentile conversion in Csesarea, and thereupon we 
practically bid him farewell. His primacy seems at 
an end, and the stage of history in the book of Acts 
is visited no more by the college of the twelve. Two 
apostles (for Barnabas and Saul are both called apos- 



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161 



ties in Acts xiv. 14), unknown to the Pentecost Chris- 
tians, take the leadership of the evangelistic move- 
ment, and fill the pages of its recital to the exclusion 
of all others. Let those who insist on the absolute- 
ness of the number twelve, and on the continued 
primacy of Peter, note this addition to the number, 
and note also that if the Apostle Peter stood first on 
Pentecost and in the home of Cornelius, the Apostle 
Paul stands first in Cyprus, and Iconium, and Derbe, 
and Lystra, and Ephesus, and Philippi, and Athens, 
and Corinth, and Rome. The Holy Spirit is not 
bound to names or numbers, and there may be for us 
a lesson in the fact that the witnesses who were 
especially trained by the Master himself are now 
superseded by those who never knew him face to 
face in his mighty style of speech and deed. 

The yoke-fellowship of Barnabas and Saul is de- 
lightful, and it is suggestive of the methods of the 
Holy Spirit that he should send these two tried 
friends forth on such a mission. Barnabas was the 
first to trust Saul and vouch for him in Jerusalem; 
when he needed a helper in Antioch he thought of 
Saul far away in Tarsus, and journeyed thither to 
find him; then he brought him to Antioch, and they 
worked together for a whole year; when there was a 
charity offering to be sent to Jerusalem, Barnabas 
and Saul were intrusted with it; they returned to- 
gether from Jerusalem, and now they are sent out 
together to brave the hardships and dangers and sor- 
rows and joys of missionary pioneering in a pagan 
11 



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world. The friendship of Barnabas and Saul in the 
New Testament matches that of David and Jonathan 
in the Old, only the former is unfortunately marred 
at the last. Still, for all that dissension about Mark, 
no doubt they would both join David in saying each 
of the other, — 

"I am distressed for thee, my brother; 
Very pleasant hast thou been unto me ; 
Thy love was wonderful, passing the love of women." 

Barnabas' fitness for the foreign field is seen in 
this, that he was an experienced Christian, having 
been very early a member of the Jerusalem church; 
that he was self-sacrificing and generous, having 
given his property to the church; that he was gifted 
in the ministries of exhortation and consolation; 
that he was quick to love and trust and see the better 
Bide of everybody, as shown in his ready reception of 
Saul, and the introduction he gave him to the mother 
church; and that already he had had experience in 
Antioch, which was at the first practically a foreign 
field. In its inception he seems to have been the 
leader in the work, having been first trusted by the 
Jerusalem church, and first named by the Antioch 
church. Early in their first tour abroad, however, 
Saul's name was changed to Paul (Ch. xiii. 9), and 
from that time on he was the recognized leader in 
the work. At a later date Barnabas developed two 
points of weakness; in Antioch he was "carried 
away" by the dissimulation of Peter and the preju- 
dices of certain Jerusalem Judaizers, and in Paul's 



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163 



opinion his love for his nephew John Mark warped 
his judgment in the choice of a fellow minister for 
their proposed second journey. Paul would have 
nothing to do with a deserter. "So Barnabas took 
Mark and sailed away to Cyprus," and thereafter we 
hear nothing of them except as they are mentioned in 
a generous way by Paul in various of his letters. 
Evidently Mark was restored to the confidence of 
Paul, and became " profitable to him for the minis- 
try." (II. Tim. iv. 11). Perhaps both Paul and Bar- 
nabas were excusable for the quarrel. At all events, 
the missionary forces were doubled, and later recon- 
ciliations followed. 

The parting of the ways of these two mission- 
aries is the signal at which the writer of Acts drops 
the curtain upon Barnabas, as previously upon 
Peter. During the years 47 and 48 they labored 
together; in 50 they visited Jerusalem together in 
behalf of the liberty of the Gentiles; in 51 they 
parted, and the rest of Acts from that date, begin- 
ning with the fortieth verse of the fifteenth 
chapter, is devoted to the labors and trials of the 
Apostle Paul. This portion of the book may there- 
fore be called a missionary manual, or it may be 
styled the biography of the prince of missionaries. 

In attempting to speak of St. Paul's apostleship, 
or what is the same, his missionary character and 
career, one feels the burden both of the greatness 
of the theme and the wealth of material. Even 
Luke's missionary biography is not an adequate 



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presentation of the man and of his work; our 
hero's autobiography must be taken into account, 
and that means the whole of his thirteen epistles. 
To the greater purposes of his writings an autobi- 
ography was incidental, but inevitable. No one 
would accuse him of setting out intentionally upon, 
such a poor business as the writing of an autobi- 
ography, but his life was so identified with his 
works that in telling about the latter he must bring 
whole pages out of the former. His tears, his 
groans, his prayers, his joys, his logic, and his love 
were in the churches he established, and they are 
also in the pages he has written. The defense of 
his apostolic office, the recital of the perils and 
persecutions he endured, his championship of Gen- 
tile Christianity, and his reasons for it, his fatherly 
care of the churches, his passionate love of 
Christ, his heroic endurance in the cause of Christ; 
and the background to all this, the hatred, the 
zeal, the conscience with which he once persecuted 
Christ — in short, the soul of the man with its 
storms and revolutions, with its peace and prayers 
and bitter tears, with its unconquerable faith and 
unspeakable visions, and finally, with its eager 
expectancy of the crown of life eternal, speaks in 
every one of his immortal letters. His soul is a 
part of his style. His pen was vital with his own 
blood. If he wrote at all he could not but pro- 
duce an autobiography. For this reason his epis- 
tles must be in our mind's eye quite as much as 



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165 



the book of Acts while a feeble attempt is made 
to characterize him. 

It is not proposed to speak here of the Apostle 
Paul's missionary work, but of his equipments and 
character as a missionary. Nature was lavish in 
her endowments upon him of mind and heart 
and will. He was perfectly balanced in love, in 
logic, and in purpose, and his mold was that of 
a giant. His home life in Tarsus must have con- 
tributed in a goodly degree to his knowledge of 
Greek, and of the Greek-speaking, pagan peoples 
of Western Asia. To such a nature as his this 
would bring by revulsion a more intensely Jewish, 
but also, after his conversion, a more cosmopolitan 
style of thought. His education in Jerusalem at 
the feet of Gamaliel gave him an intimate ac- 
quaintance with the law of Moses, and made him 
a zealot for the traditions of his race. The re- 
flection of his pride and zeal in race and caste 
and legalism is in many a passage of his epistles, 
where the experience is turned to good account in 
his debates with Judaizing Christians. "If any 
other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might 
trust in the flesh, I more; circumcised the eighth 
day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, 
an Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law, 
a Pharisee ; concerning zeal, persecuting the church ; 
touching the righteousness which is of the law, 
blameless." Such was Saul when he stood listen- 
ing to the speech of Stephen, and holding the 



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clothes of the enraged men who stoned him to death. 
A typical man, only that he was a Jew; a typical 
Jew, only that he was born in a foreign city; a 
typical Pharisee, only that he was honest; and a 
typical inquisitor, only that he was converted. 
Farrar has invited us to note that many times in 
the providence of God the destroyer of a creed or 
system has been bred in its inmost bosom. Sakya 
Mouni, in Brahminism; Luther, in Augustinianism ; 
Pascal, in Jesuitism; Wesley and Whitefield, in 
Anglicanism; Paul, in Phariseeism. Revulsion 
against false and deadly systems is a mighty in- 
spiration to great and honest souls. Paul had the 
inspiration of a double revulsion, first from the 
heathen environment of his childhood home; and 
secondly, from the equally deadly, if not quite so 
abominable, Pharisaic environment of his manhood 
home, and legal studies. 

Add to all this his point blank conversion. His 
change was a complete " about face." In a double 
sense he was smitten to the earth, and in a double 
sense he saw a light above the brightness of the sun . 
Where the first inquisitor fell to the ground on his 
way to Damascus there fell also his pride and his 
prejudice, the former in his own people, and the 
latter against aliens; in his baptism he buried his 
old life, and ever afterward counted it but refuse 
that he might win Christ, and be found of him, not 
having his own righteousness. From his baptism 
he arose in newness of life to walk with Christ. 



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167 



There is nothing half and half about him. With 
the Apostle Peter, release from the law was a long 
process, requiring repeated revelations, and contin- 
ual supervision of the Holy Spirit; with the Apostle 
Paul this release was like the snapping of a chain, 
and the fall of dungeon walls, and the flash of noon- 
day light. Immediately he seized upon the genius 
of the Gospel, and the logic of love became to him 
the soul of liberty. Where others of his race 
groped and stumbled, he saw and ran; and the 
conclusions to which they were forced by stress of 
facts, he seized by grasp of intuition. The abso- 
lute and sudden revolution in his mental attitude 
is, from every human standpoint, a psychological 
enigma, and critics adverse to the Gospel have pro- 
nounced it a miracle. His cry when smitten to the 
earth, 44 Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" was 
his oath of allegiance to his new-found Lord. It 
was, to him, what a Roman soldier would have called 
the sacramentum. All his reverence for the fathers s 
all his allegiance to the law of the fathers, he trans- 
ferred suddenly and irreversibly to Christ. Like a 
man who is lost, and suddenly finds himself in an old 
and familiar spot, the world swung round. His faith 
was fixed forever; his repentance was revolutionary; 
scales fell from his eyes ; Christ became to him a sun 
always at meridian; he uttered the word, 44 Lord," 
and the word went with him to his dying day. 
These factors, namely, by way of summary, his rich 
native endowments, his liberal education, mingled 



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of Greek and Hebrew elements, and his thorough 
conversion accompanied with revulsion from pagan 
idolatry and Jewish legalism, made him the cham- 
pion of liberal Christianity. He saw the antithesis 
in nature, and the inevitable conflict in practice be- 
tween love and law; between prohibition and inspira- 
tion; between deadly technicality and a vital spirit- 
uality. It required such a soul to break the crust 
of custom, and to declare an emancipation from 
the carnal ordinances and empty types of Mosaism ; 
to show that circumcision was nothing, and uncir- 
cumcision nothing; to rebuke the Gentile Christians 
for trying to follow the lead of Judaizers in the 
observance of Mosaic clean meats and new moons 
and Sabbaths ; and to put baptism with Christ, new- 
ness of manhood in Christ, and the exaltation of the 
cross of Christ in absolute, and glorious, and ever- 
lasting antithesis to all mere legalism, and formalism, 
and dogmatism, and sectarianism, and idolatry of 
every sort. In the person of Peter Christianity had 
its "apostle of the rock; " in John, its "apostle of 
love; " in Paul, its apostle of emancipation and 
evangelization. 

And his work of emancipation is not done so long 
as the church is burdened with rituals, and mum- 
meries, and legalistic notions of the New Testament, 
which usurp the place in the soul of a vital kinship 
with Christ, which are like a continual malaria to 
spirituality, and which impede the way of progress; 
nor his work of evangelization, so long as hundreds 



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169 



of millions of our race still sit in darkness and in 
the shadow of death. It was by no accident that 
Luther espoused the book of Galatians, claiming it 
for his bride, and that the Eeformation followed. 
It was not by feeble insight into the needs of his 
times that he called the book of Komans "the mas- 
terpiece of the New Testament, and the purest Gos- 
pel," assuring us that it can never be too much 
studied, and that the more it is handled the more 
precious it becomes. It would seem morally impos- 
sible to come under the mastery of the Apostle 
Paul's thought, and still dote upon the jots and 
tittles, the trifles and technicalities, that vex mis- 
guided disciples and minds of smaller mould than 
his. In the reasonable sacrifice of our own living 
bodies, all other sacrifices, whether upon Jewish or 
pagan altars, are, from his standpoint, forever ful- 
filled, and done for, and forgotten. In the Sabbath 
rest that remains for the children of God, the ever- 
lasting peace of soul that comes of repentance and 
forgiveness, all other Sabbaths find their full sig- 
nificance and their permanent antitype, and the 
Mosaic rest days are transplaced by Christian memo- 
rial ones. Under his plea for justification by faith, 
the whole of that baneful, all but world-wide trust 
in the meritoriousness of works goes down abso- 
lutely; and under his law of love, coupled with expe- 
diency, a thousand of our questions, whether trifling 
or important, about times, and seasons, and rituals, 
and vestments, and choirs, and societies, and gov- 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



ernments, and amusements even, are at once re- 
moved from the arena of legalistic * and dogmatic 
debate, to that of prayer and brotherly counsel, and 
4 4 the common sense of most." Such was the man 
whom the Holy Spirit thrust forth into the pagan 
world to be first and freest, the ablest and safest 
herald of the cross to those peoples whence there 
has sprung by the lapse of centuries our Western 
Christendom. The divine wisdom of the choice may 
be seen by way of contrast in the deplorable misfits 
that sometimes get themselves into our mission 
fields nowadays, — small souls, the mouthpieces of a 
hobby or a whim; the lispers of provincial shibbo- 
leths; the infallible dogmatists, who cannot forget 
that they are the tools of a party or a sect, while 
presuming to herald a Savior whose truth and love 
are as universal and unfettered as the rains and 
rays that his Father and ours sends upon the good 
and bad alike. It is deplorable when gnat-strainers 
get into mission fields, microscopically searching out 
this small wing of heresy, and that small leg of 
irregularity, omitting, meanwhile, the weightier mat- 
ters of mercy and truth, and swallowing much (as 
is the rule with such characters) that is big with 
personal animosity, and bitter with sectarian hatred 
and strife. 

A few other points must be noted as factors in 
the problem of the Apostle Paul's immense influ- 
ence. The word missionary itself is suggestive of 
the first that may be named. Translated, the word 



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171 



apostle must read missionary, just as the word bap- 
tize, translated, must read immerse. Thus we 
should read, "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called 
to be a missionary, separated unto the Gospel of 
God." (Romans i. 1.) And again, "Paul, called to 
be a missionary of Jesus Christ through the will of 
God." (I. Cor. i. 1.) And again, "Paul, a mission- 
ary not from men, neither through man, but through 
Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him 
from the dead." (Gal. i. 1.) The thought of send- 
ing, as embodied in this word, was a predominant 
one with Christ, and the thought of being sent 
became predominant with his chiefly chosen twelve. 
After a night of prayer he called to him his dis- 
ciples, "and he chose from them twelve, whom he 
named missionaries." (Luke vi. 13.) In many a 
form the Master reiterates the thought. "I chose 
you and appointed you that ye should go and bear 
fruit, and that your fruit should abide." "As the 
Father hath sent me, even so send I you." This 
last while he was breathing upon them and saying, 
"Receive ye the Holy Spirit." This act stands very 
close, both in point of time and in the Scripture 
context, to our Lord's final message to his mission- 
aries, the crown of all his instructions, namely, "Go 
ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to 
every creature." The Apostle Paul came under the 
complete mastery of this predominant thought. 
Though he acknowledged himself as one "born out 
of due time," and "not meet to be called a mis- 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



sionary because he persecuted the church of God," 
yet he never failed to defend himself as one dis- 
tinctively sent of Christ. His life was wrought out 
under this ruling ideal. His mission was to be 
Christ's missionary. To this end he magnified his 
office. In utter abandonment of self he made full 
proof of his ministry, seeking by every means lawful 
and by all things expedient to honor his " high call- 
ing of God in Christ." 

Again : He came under the mastery of Christ's sim- 
ple and predominant creed. The Apostle Peter saw 
no more clearly than the Apostle Paul that Christ 
is all and in all. His creed was Christ. He said, "I 
know whom I have believed." Christ, to the Jews a 
stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness, was to 
him the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Into 
whatever dark places daylight creeps, it may still be 
traced back to the sun. So of the activities and 
the teachings of Paul; back to Christ they all run, 
proclaiming him as their source. This singleness 
of creed, bodied forth in the sublime personality of 
Jesus, and declared and defended by Paul, exclu- 
sively, and without compromise, gave him immense 
power over decadent Mosaism and the destructive 
idolatries of the pagan world. Through the preach- 
ing of Christ and the resurrection of Christ, he 
wrought moral and spiritual revolution wherever he 
went. Among the idolaters of Ephesus, the philoso- 
phers of Athens, and the rulers of Rome, he lifted 
up his voice alike in the name of Christ, glorying 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



173 



in the cross, saying, 44 1 am not ashamed of the 
Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation, to 
every one that believeth, to the Jew first, and also 
to the Gentile." This made him an iconoclast of 
old and futile forms; a destroyer of hateful and 
harmful distinctions between man and man ; a cham- 
pion of liberty and progress to the church and 
the world; a wise master-builder of churches; a 
father to young men in the ministry; a collector 
and distributer of alms, and an unrivaled writer of 
letters to the churches and children of his Gospel 
ministry and love. 

Again : The Apostle Paul came under the power 
of a predominant purpose. 44 Buried with Christ in 
baptism, "-—-it is his own phrase- — he arose "to walk 
in newness of life." As he voices the unity of 
his creed in many forms of speech, so he gives 
expression to his singleness of purpose in a multi- 
tude of texts: 44 For me to live is Christ; to die is 
gain." 4 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; 
and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live 
in the faith of the Son of God." 44 This one thing I 
do: forgetting the things that are behind, I press 
toward the mark of the prize of our high calling in 
Christ Jesus." 44 1 determined to know nothing 
among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified." 
44 Ye are all the sons of God through faith in Christ 
Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into 
Christ have put on Christ. There can be neither 
Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



there can be no male and female; for ye are one in 
Christ Jesus. And if ye are Christ's, then are ye 
Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the prom- 
ise." "God was in Christ reconciling the world to 
himself." "We in Christ's stead pray you, be ye 
reconciled to God." This is a hasty gleaning of 
texts showing the all-inclusive because all-exclusive 
purpose of Paul. He narrowed that he might deepen 
the channel of his life. The losing of life in order 
to find it is the secret of all great living. This 
was Paul's attainment as it was Christ's command- 
ment, and it is admirable. It made him a tower 
of strength to the infant church, and a blessing to 
all ages. Having written himself down in a lowly 
way as the "bond-servant" of Jesus Christ, he has 
shown us in his life such exaltation as comes only 
by the way of the readiest, lowliest, loftiest service. 
Surely if our Lord ever had a servant upon earth 
who could with right and with reverence lay claim 
to the stigmata of the Master himself, saying, "I 
bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus," that 
servant was the missionary Paul, in labors more 
abundant than others, " in stripes above measure, in 
prisons more frequent, in deaths oft." 

In the last place, he came under the power of a 
predominant love. Farrar in his life of Paul calls 
the thirteenth chapter of I. Corinthians "the most 
glorious gem, even in the writings of St. Paul." 
John is known pre-eminently as the apostle of love, 
but he nowhere excels Paul in his teachings regarding 



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175 



love unless it is when he gathers up the whole philos- 
ophy of creation and religion in that sublime trinity 
of words, 44 God is love." Moses proved himself the 
worthy leader of a great people in that he was willing 
to die for them, and his strenuous, determined, anx- 
ious care for them rushes to its climax of expression 
in this self-sacrificial prayer: " Yet now, if thou wilt 
forgive their sin — •; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, 
out of the book which thou hast written." Paul 
reaches the same climax of human love for his "kins- 
men according to the flesh" when he says, 44 1 could 
wish myself accursed from Christ for them." Such 
words are so foreign to us that they astonish us, and 
we try to explain them away. But Paul meant what 
he said. That height and depth of love, however 
foreign it may be to a church shamefully self-com- 
placent in non-apostolic, non-missionary lethargy, was 
to Paul an inspiration born of the self-sacrificial love 
of Jesus. Moses was a type of Christ; Paul was 
Christ's disciple ; the one is a forerunner, the other a 
follower of the Christ. Yet they stand side by side 
in a devotion to their people that was glorious, and 
side by side also in their exaltation to an eminence of 
love wherein they are surpassed only by One, and to 
that One they both direct us, saying, each in his 
appropriate and peculiar way, 44 Behold the Lamb of 
God, that taketh away the sin of the world." 

Such was the man whom the Holy Spirit chose, 
saying, 44 Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the 
work whereunto I have appointed them," and who 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



was sent forth into the world of reeking paganism 
that gathered around the Mediterranean Sea in order 
to " kindle a fire of faith that should burn to its very 
water's edge," but who in doing so was called upon 
to front every form of peril by sea and by land, 
among idolaters and among false brethren; was 
called upon to endure — but no language can match 
his own — "Thrice was I beaten with rods; once was 
I stoned ; thrice I suffered shipwreck ; a night and a 
day I have been in the deep. In weariness and pain- 
fulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in 
fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Besides those 
things that are without, that which cometh upon me 
daily, the care of all the churches. Who is weak, 
and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I 
burn not? If I must needs glory, I will glory in the 
things that concern my weakness. The God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he who is blessed 
forevermore, knoweth that I lie not." 

A chain of churches marked his pathway, and in 
Caesar's household Christians were found before he 
died; and though under the worst of emperors his 
poor body was led to martyrdom out along the Ostian 
way, yet within three hundred years a successor to 
that emperor became himself a confessor of Christ ; 
and along the mighty roadways of Eome, upon which 
her armies had marched forth to war and had re- 
turned in triumph, there passed many and many a 
missionary of the cross, heralding in peace the name 
of the Prince of Peace. 



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177 



Other missionaries have equaled or even surpassed 
the Apostle Paul in special directions, but not one 
has been his compeer in the totality of his sufferings 
and achievements. William Carey surpassed him as 
a linguist; perhaps Adoniram Judson equaled him in 
physical endurance and sufferings for Christ's sake; 
David Livingstone was a heroic sufferer and a greater 
pioneer; Henry Martyn reminds us of him in the 
energy and intensity of his movements, and the per- 
manent impression he made wherever he went; in 
martyrdom there have been many who died as unwav- 
eringly as he. But taken for all in all it is the judg- 
ment of students that no saint has equaled him. 

"The elements were 
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up, 
And say to all the world, This was a man." 

As a pioneer missionary, building " not on other 
men's foundations;" as a ''wise master builder of 
churches; " as a defender, on the one hand of the 
liberty of the church against Judaizers, and on the 
other of the faith of the church against philoso- 
phists ; as the creator of a literature received above 
all others as unimpeachable and canonical; as dis- 
criminating with absolute nicety between the essen- 
tial and the expedient in Gospel work and worship ; 
as a sympathizer even unto tears with the weeping, 
unto joys with the joyous, and unto heart burnings 
with those who stumbled; as a fearless proclaimer of 
the cross and the resurrection of Jesus; as a tender 

12 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



and pathetic pleader for souls; as an inspirer of 
men; as a distributer of alms; and finally, as a ready 

and triumphant martyr, he stands before the world 

as its accepted foremost saint. And standing thus in 

his lonely grandeur, he asks us to forget him while 

we behold the Christ in him, calling himself the 

chief of sinners while we behold him as the chief of 

saints. 

His epitaph is chiseled by his own hand, not iu mar- 
ble, but upon the heart of the world wherever Christ 
is loved, and wherever history is true to her noblest 
treasures: "I have fought a good fight; I have fin- 
ished my course; I have kept the faith; henceforth 
there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, 
which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give to me 
at that day; and not to me only, but to them also 
that love his appearing." 



IX. 

THE FIRST FOREIGN MISSIONARY JOURNEY 



"How easy it must have been for Jews of the Diaspora, who 
had been converted when visiting Jerusalem at their festivals, to 
induce some of them (the apostles) to carry the Gospel to their 
countrymen outside; or other members of the primitive Church 
might in their commercial travels bear the Gospel to the syna- 
gogues of the Diaspora. But this spread of the Gospel was entirely 
incidental, and the Acts are right in representing the organized 
missionary journey of Barnabas and Saul as an epoch-making 
event," — Weiss. 

180 



IX. 



THE FIRST FOREIGN MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 

"So they being sent forth by the Holy Spirit, departed unto 
Seleucia ; and from thence they sailed unto Cyprus."— Acts xiii. 4. 

It was a dreadful world into which Barnabas and 
Saul were sent. In many a passage, but especially in 
the first chapter of his letter to the Romans, the 
Apostle Paul has set the brand of infamy upon it, 
and, Cain-like, it must bear that brand forever. An- 
cient paganism was a sink of perdition with modern 
parallels nowhere except among modern pagans and 
idolaters. Only those who know heathenism in the 
centers of its influence can appreciate the apostle's 
terrible arraignment of it. Our missionaries who 
return to us from the islands of the Pacific, and from 
India and China and Africa, and from lands domin- 
ated by the grosser forms of Roman Catholicism, 
tell us that we know nothing of the spiritual darkness 
that broods like a pall over the very temples of 
idolatry; of the social distress and the fearful sins 
that destroy men's lives here and forever, and of the 
thraldom of superstition that forbids like a chaos the 
entrance of order. Buddha and Brahma and Con- 
fucius have done nothing to lift their peoples above 
the grossest forms of idolatry, and the physical tor- 
tures and shockingly obscene rites that too fre- 

181 



182 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



quently accompany idol worship. The misguided 
devotees of Brahmanism aud Buddhism and fetish- 
ism have been led to the cultivation rather than the 
destruction of castes and class distinctions with their 
inexpressible hatreds and their innumerable cruelties; 
they have not frowned upon polygamy and lechery 
and base tantric forms of worship; they have not 
forbidden widow-burning and infanticide and human 
sacrifices; they have enslaved men; they have de- 
graded women; they have adored cattle and mon- 
keys; they have worshiped snakes and devils; they 
have neglected the poor, the sick, and the insane, 
except to torture them with exorcisms; and myriads 
upon myriads of men and women have been left to 
corrupt themselves in those things that they know 
naturally as brute beasts. 

The ancient idolaters and the modern ones are 
therefore alike described by Paul when he says, 
* ' Even as they refused to have Grod in their knowl- 
edge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind to do 
those things that are not fitting; being filled with all 
unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, mali- 
ciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, 
malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, 
insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, 
disobedient to parents, without understanding, cove- 
nant-breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful; 
who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they that 
practice such things are worthy of death, not only do 



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183 



the same, but also consent with them that practice 
them." 

Farrar suggests that Tarsus itself, the birthplace of 
Paul, was, because of its paganism and its pollutions, 
no unfit burial-place for Julian the Apostate. "The 
seat of a celebrated school of letters," he says, "it 
was at the same time the metropolis of a province so 
low that it was counted among the three most vil- 
lainous k's of antiquity, Kappadokia, Kilikia and 
Krete. What religion there was at this period had 
chiefly assumed an orgiastic and oriental character, 
and the popular faith of many even in Rome was a 
strange mixture of Greek, Eoman, Egyptian, Phry- 
gian, Phoenician and Jewish elements. The wild 
fanatical enthusiasms of the Eastern cults shook with 
new sensations of mad sensuality and weird super- 
stition the feeble and jaded despair of Aryan pagan- 
ism. The Tarsian idolatry was composed of these 
mingled elements. . . . 

"The traditional founder of the city was the 
Assyrian, Sardanapalus, whose semi-historic exist- 
ence was confused, in the then syncretism of pagan 
worship, with various representatives of the sun- 
god — the Asiatic Sandan, the Phoenician Baal and the 
Grecian Hercules. The gross allusiveness and origin 
of this worship, its connection with the very types 
and ideals of luxurious effeminacy, unbounded glut- 
tony and brutal license, were quite sufficient to awake 
the indignant loathing of each true-hearted Jew. 
And these revolts of natural antipathy must have 



184 studies m ACTS 



been intensified with patriotic disgust in the hearts of 
a people in whom true religion has ever been united 
with personal purity when they saw that at the main 
festival of this degraded cult the effeminate Sardan- 
apalus and masculine Semiramis, each equally detest- 
able, were worshiped with rites which externally 
resembled the pure and thankful rejoicings of the 
Feast of Tabernacles. St. Paul must have witnessed 
this festival. He must have seen at Anchiale the 
most defiant symbol of cynical contentment with all 
which is merely animal in the statue of Sardan- 
apalus, represented as snapping his fingers while 
he uttered the sentiment engraved upon the pedestal, 

'Eat, drink, and enjoy thyself, the rest is nothing.'" 

Godet says that the Apostle Paul's picture of the 
unnatural vices prevalent in Gentile society is con- 
firmed "in all points by the frightful details con- 
tained in the works of Greek and Latin writers." 

Macaulay has left us, in his "Fragments of a 
Roman Tale," a description of the utter moral laxity 
among the noble Romans in the days of Caesar and 
Cicero. Revelry, gambling, conspiracy, lewdness, 
brawls and assassinations filled the minds and occu- 
pied the time of an aristocracy rendered inordinately 
brutal by wars and inordinately rich by conquests. 

If anything were wanting as an evidence of the 
coarse cruelty and inhuman abandonment of the 
times it would be abundantly supplied by the barest 
description of the amphitheaters, and of the bloody 



\ 



STUDIES IN ACTS 185 

plays demanded by the people and furnished by their 
rulers. More and more the old martial spirit, culti- 
vated by generations of warfare, took to gloating 
itself upon scenes of bloodshed deliberately planned 
and executed for the Eoman holidays. The crimes 
of Nero and Caligula did not prevent them from 
standing well with the people so long as they were 
able to furnish bread and games for the unemployed, 
and that class included nearly the whole of the popu- 
lation minus the slaves, who did the work, and of 
whom there were sixty millions in the empire. In 
the time of the republic sixty-six days in the year 
were given up to shows; during the empire, a hun- 
dred and seventy-three. The expenses were enor- 
mous, sometimes reaching as much as $75,000.00 on a 
single performance. "In the year 80 A. D., Titus 
gave a show that lasted a hundred days, and exhib- 
ited in one day five thousand wild animals/' In the 
games at Berytus he compelled thousands of Jews to 
fight and die. As if to color the degradation and 
cruelty of the age by an unintentional sarcasm, this 
emperor was seriously called "the darling of the 
human race." Trajan (98 to 117 A. D.) gave a show 
that lasted four months, in which he exhibited ten 
thousand men and eleven thousand wild beasts. 
Claudius (41 to 54 A. D.) entertained Rome with a 
sham sea fight in which nineteen thousand men were 
engaged. Augustus, who was emperor when Christ 
was born, testified in a codicil to his will that he had 
exhibited eight thousand men and three thousand 



186 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



five hundred and ten wild beasts. At a comic per- 
formance dwarfs were set to fighting dwarfs, and 
every expedient was tried and no cruelty shunned to 
bring out new sensations. ' 6 Prisoners would appear 
on the stage in gorgeous clothes, from which sud- 
denly flames would burst forth and consume them. 
Ixion was seen on his wheel. Mucius Scaevola was 
seen to put his hand into a coal fire and keep it there 
till it was burned off. Orpheus was presented with 
his harp amid a smiling nature, to all appearances 
charmed with his music. When the spectators began 
to grow weary with the show a wild beast would rush 
out from the foliage and tear him to pieces amid the 
laughter of the public." 

When a victim was down and put up his hand 
pleading for his life he might be spared if the people 
put up their fingers ; but he must be finished if they 
turned down their thumbs. The women who 
thronged the amphitheaters were usually quick to 
say by the latter sign, "Do him to death." Once 
when food was scarce for the beasts in the menagerie 
Caligula proposed to feed them on criminals. If a 
gladiator showed fear he was prodded forward into 
the battle with hot irons. 

The^ emperors while thus engaged in slaughtering 
beasts and murdering men for the amusement of the 
people, were prone to dote upon mistresses and race 
horses. Caligula had a horse that he fed from a 
marble manger, sometimes, however, inviting him 
to his own table, and dining him on almonds and 



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187 



raisins. The licentiousness and trifling of the empe- 
rors were in turn imitated by the people, and found 
public expression in shows that were as shameful as 
those above described were cruel. Charles Loring 
Brace tells us in a significant paragraph that "the 
extremes to which licentious shows were carried can 
not even be explained in modern writings." He 
says, "In fact, few classical scholars who have not 
waded through the disgusting mire of a large part of 
Roman literature, can have any idea of the depth of 
obscenity and immorality which it reached. Athen- 
seus, Petronius, Apuleius (in his lighter works), 
Juvenal, and many others, only show how debased 
even genius and talent may become under such influ- 
ences as so much of the Greek and Roman religions 
furnished. Even the universal suffering and ruin of 
the Roman Empire had no influence on the public 
appetite for these enjoyments. In Salvian's bitter 
epigram, the empire ridet et moritur, laughs while 
dying." 

Again he says, speaking of the same and other 
writers: "It is not that, like Juvenal, they pick out 
extreme immoralities for a biting sarcasm ; but they 
allude casually and without shame to excesses and 
habitual vices whose very name is lost to modern 
ears. Even Cicero says soberly that it was held a 
disgrace among the Greeks not to indulge in unnat- 
ural vices. He did not say that his own countrymen 
fell even lower." 

Such was the "heartless cruelty, the unfathomable 



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corruption," and the disgusting frivolity of the peo- 
ples for whom the philosophy of Socrates, the morals 
of Seneca, and the politics of Caesar had done their 
utmost. Slaves that were not wanted were slain; 
wives that were not wanted were divorced ; children 
that were not wanted were abandoned. By and by 
emperors that were not wanted were assassinated, 
and the soldiers put the empire up for sale to the 
highest bidder. That was the style of world pro- 
duced by the boasted arts of Greece, the laws of 
Rome, and the swords of the Caesars. 

However, the very failure of philosophy and art 
and idolatry and legislation and conquest, in short, of 
the forces at work in the ancient world, to produce 
happiness and purity and permanence must be looked 
upon as a negative preparation for the coming of 
Christ. By doing its utmost, and by failing in its 
utmost, humanity learned to despair of itself. It 
proved "adequately and magnificently both that it 
could not save itself, and how splendidly worth 
saving it was." 

"Eternal hopes are man's, 
Which when they should maintain themselves aloft 
Want due consistence; like a pillar of smoke, 
That with majestic energy from earth 
Rises, but, having reached the thinner air. 
Melts and dissolves, and is no longer seen." 

A true estimate of the preparation in history for 
Christ and his message cannot fail to include the 
facts of Greek civilization and Roman government. 



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189 



The above was a negative preparation, but these were 
positive. More marvelous than the conquests of 
Alexander were the permanent results that he left 
behind him. The historian Arnold, as quoted by 
Creasy, says: * ' Asia beheld with astonishment and 
awe the uninterrupted progress of a hero, the sweep 
of whose conquests was as wide and rapid as that of 
her own barbaric kings, or of the Scythian or Chal- 
dean hordes; but, far unlike the whirlwinds of 
Asiatic warfare, the advance of the Macedonian 
leader was no less deliberate than rapid. At every 
step the Greek power took root, and the language 
and the civilization of Greece were planted from the 
shores of the iEgean to the banks of the Indus, from 
the Caspian and the great Hyrcanian plain to the 
cataracts of the Nile; to exist actually for nearly a 
thousand years, and in their influence to endure for- 
ever." 

Creasy, in his "Fifteen Decisive Battles of the 
World," says: "Within thirty years after Alexan- 
der crossed the Hellespont the Greek language was 
spoken in every country from the shores of the 
iEgean to the Indus, and also throughout Egypt — 
not indeed wholly to the extirpation of the native 
dialects, but it became the language of every court, 
of all literature, of every judicial and political func- 
tion, and formed a medium of communication among 
the many myriads of mankind inhabiting those large 
portions of the Old World." 

Eome conquered where Greece had conquered, but 



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she did not drive out the language and the influence 
of Greece. To her was committed the mission of 
legislation and centralization. With imperial reck- 
lessness of cost she bridged rivers and tunneled 
mountains and paved her roadways to the limits of 
her domains. Over these she sent out her armies to 
garrison and hold, or to invade and conquer, and 
through her armies she impressed her imperious will 
upon the world at her feet, bringing at least political 
order out of what had previously been a chaos. 
Augustus, through his long and peaceful reign, held 
the provinces of the empire as in a leash, imposing 
laws upon the conquered nations as effectually as the 
Greeks had imposed their language. 

When these two facts are placed together there is 
furnished the explanation of the following thought- 
ful paragraph: " Follow St. Paul and see his cir- 
cuits ; watch him claiming the safeguard of the same 
Roman citizenship in the Macedonian town and the 
capital of Palestine, laying hold at Csesarea on the 
horns of a central tribunal at Rome, borne thither by 
the sails of the carrying trade in the 6 ship of Alexan- 
dria,' meditating a journey into Spain, numbering 
among his Roman converts, as seems probable, one 
who had a direct connection with Roman Britain, 
writing in the same Greek to Rome and to the high- 
landers of Galatia, never crossed in his journeys by 
any track of war, never stopped by challenge of 
frontier or custom house; these are so many object 
lessons to show what the ' Pax Romana ' and the 



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191 



Roman unity of power and organization imported for 
the growth of a world-religion." 

History, the most accurate and truly philosophical, 
is the best commentary on the Apostle Paul's pro- 
found observation, "When the fullness of time was 
come, God sent forth his Son." It was in the same 
opportune time that the apostle himself and his 
fellow-workers were sent forth, a time marked by 
religious perversion and moral decay on the one 
hand, by unity of Greek culture and Roman domin- 
ion on the other. 

Into that world, therefore, though all too briefly 
and inadequately described, Barnabas and Paul were 
sent forth. It was an enterprise full of the beauty of 
holiness and the sublimity of faith. When nations 
set themselves against nations, it is with the bar- 
barous splendor of thousands upon thousands of 
armed men ; but when the Lord sets himself against a 
world in wickedness, it is in the persons thus of two 
lonely men, without sword or shield, and armed only 
with the story upon their lips of a third Man who had 
died on a Roman cross, "whom they affirmed to be 
alive." There is the more than martial tread of a 
divine heroism through the whole history of missions. 
The missionary walks by faith, not by sight, and as 
his commission is divine, so his victory is preassured. 

Setting sail from Seleucia, Barnabas and Saul must 
have felt that they were consecrating their little 
merchant ship to new uses, and that her white sails 
were made by their mission the wings of peace and 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



love and forgiveness. The Mediterranean Sea was 
called, from its commercial importance, "The Mar- 
riage King of Nations." Through the work of these 
missionaries it was destined to become, within little 
more than a generation, the marriage ring of 
churches of the redeemed. 

The chief incidents of this first missionary journey 
are the conversion of Sergius Paulus, the preaching 
and persecution in Pisidian Antioch, the preach- 
ing and persecution in Iconium, the preaching and 
persecution in Lystra, and the preaching in Derbe; 
then upon the return journey, the confirming of the 
churches, and the ordaining of elders in each of 
them. 

Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of the island of 
C}-prus, is described as "a prudent man, who called 
for Barnabas and Saul and desired to hear the word 
of God." At the same time he was keeping with 
him Elymas the sorcerer, a false prophet, a renegade 
Jew, calling himself Bar-jesus. Judged by his equals 
and superiors in Roman society, Sergius Paulus was 
not censurable for keeping his household prophet, 
though of such a character. Through all ages those 
who have been devoid of the knowledge of the true 
God and of trust in him, have been the victims of 
false prophets, magicians, sorcerers, wizards, witches, 
astrologers, sibyllists, augurs, casters of horoscopes, 
dream interpreters, spiritualistic mediums, strolling 
fortune-tellers, mahatmas, or some such quack mira- 
cle venders. Pharaoh had his magicians; Nebuchad- 



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193 



nezzar, his astrologers; Saul, when he had lost God, 
sought the witch of Endor, and there were scarcely 
any of the heroes of Greece or the rulers of Eome 
who were not in some way or other the patrons 
of Delphic oracles, or Pythian priestesses, or dream- 
ers, or prognosticators, or ventriloquists, or deceivers 
of some sort. ''There was scarcely a Roman family 
that did not keep or consult its own fortune-teller, 
and Juvenal describes the Emperor Tiberias as 
seated with a herd of Chaldeans on his rock at 
Capri." The emperors Nero and Vespasian and 
Domitian, all of whom persecuted Christians, enter- 
tained each a superstitious regard for his pet sor- 
cerers. 

Naturally, this household sorcerer withstood Bar- 
nabas and Saul, seeking to turn away the proconsul 
from the faith. Strangely enough, such abnormal 
people are the first to recognize the man with a holy 
mission, and to confess him. The demonized man 
in the synagogue at Capernaum was the first to con- 
fess Christ, saying, "Let us alone; what have we to 
do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? I know thee 
who thou art, the Holy One of God." The instincts 
of fear are supernatu rally quick, and in such matters 
they are inerrant. At St. Paul's rebuke Elymas was 
smitten with blindness, and Sergius Paulus became a 
believer, "being astonished at the doctrine of the 
Lord." 

It was probably in the year 47 that the rulers and 
elders in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch noticed 

13 



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two strangers seated among the worshipers there, and 
sent to them, saying (in a way that seems to us 
delightfully antique and fraternal), " Ye men and 
brethren, if ye have any word of exhortation for the 
people, say on." They little dreamed of the storm 
they were inviting. Led by this invitation, the Apos- 
tle Paul "stood up, and beckoning with the hand, 
said, Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audi- 
ence." Thereupon he delivered a sermon (xiii. 17- 
41), the outlines of which may be clearly traced in 
that of the martyr Stephen. There is the same his- 
toric background, there is a similar use of prophecy, 
there is the declaration of the Messiahship of Jesus, 
and in both there is the same fearful warning against 
the rejection of Jesus, enforced by the mournful his- 
toric rejection of the prophets of Israel by the 
fathers of Israel. Stephen's sermon was not lost 
upon the young man who held the clothes of his mur- 
derers, and in the providence of God Paul the apos- 
tle is more than a compensation for Stephen the 
martyr. This sermon was the honest and daring con- 
fession of a mistaken man. Ten years before, possi- 
bly fourteen, Paul had sanctioned the murder of 
Stephen for preaching that sermon, but he could not 
murder the sermon. It lived in his soul, and lived 
the more vitally there since it was eloquent with a 
brother's blood, still "crying to him from the ground." 
He must have pondered over that sermon, and prayed 
and wept over it. And now, having nurtured it 
in his soul with prayers and tears and meditations, 



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195 



the opportune time has come for its delivery, and he 
will preach it, though he, too, must put his life in 
jeopardy for it. No wonder that nearly the whole 
city should be roused by such a preparation and 
delivery of sermons. They were not able to resist 
the wisdom and spirit with which this new Stephen 
spake. 

But the Apostle Paul, in this Antioch sermon, 
makes two noteworthy advances upon Stephen. The 
latter was cut off before he could declare the resur- 
rection of Jesus; Paul declares it fully. Probably 
Stephen would not have declared the insufficiency of 
the law of Moses as contrasted with the all-sufficiency 
of the Gospel. This Paul does in the following 
words, which are the first statement of a position 
that he was afterward to maintain and defend by 
much reasoning and under many persecutions. 

" Be it known unto you, therefore, men and breth- 
ren, that through this man is preached unto you the 
forgiveness of sins ; and by him all that believe are 
justified from all things from which they could not be 
justified by the law of Moses." 

Meyer suggests that this is but the major premise 
of the proposition; that the minor premise, namely, 
by the law of Moses there can be no justification, is 
prudently left to be inferred. This doctrine of justi- 
fication by faith, with its antithesis, no justification 
by law, is in reality but another voicing of the 
soteriology preached by the Apostle Peter on the day 
of Pentecost. In his answer to inquiring believers, 



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"Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the 
name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins," 
there is implied the same antithesis as regards the 
law. He, too, leaves a minor premise prudently 
unexpressed. But this minor premise of salvation, 
namely, freedom from the law of works with its im- 
plied meritoriousness, prudently unexpressed on the 
day of Pentecost, and now but half expressed by the 
Apostle Paul, was destined to become the one great 
root of bitterness in the Apostolic Church. And 
again, after fifteen hundred years of church history, 
mostly mournful, the Apostle Paul's major and 
minor premises of salvation were destined to become 
the logic of liberty from the bondage of Roman 
Catholicism. There are striking parallels on the 
one hand between the Jewish church of the first 
century and the Romish church of the sixteenth, and 
on the other, between Paul the emancipator from the 
one and Luther the emancipator from the other. 
The beginnings of history are hidden in the souls of 
the heroes of history. When Saul of Tarsus cried out, 
"Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" there, in his 
expressed heart-loyalty to the Lordship of Jesus, was 
the beginning of more than a biography. When 
Martin Luther was ascending Pilate's staircase in 
Rome upon his knees, counting beads, rosary in 
hand, with the promise of absolution awaiting him 
on the top stair, there came to his mind the text, 
"The just shall live by faith." He arose and fled in 
shame and humiliation from the place, and that was 



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197 



the beginning of the Reformation. The theses 
against indulgences were a consequence of the in- 
spiration born in that supreme moment. It is true 
that Luther himself says of the theses, 44 In fourteen 
days they ran clear through all Germany, for all the 
world was complaining about the indulgences; and 
because all the bishops and doctors were silent, and 
nobody was willing to bell the cat, Luther became a 
renowned doctor, because at last somebody took hold 
of the thing." But it was Paul's sermon in Antioch 
with a German gloss upon it, suiting it to the times, 
that ran through all Germany in fourteen days, and 
has not ceased running through all true Protestant- 
ism in opposition to the meritoriousness of Phari- 
seeism and Roman Catholicism, and in short all 
forms of idolatry and paganism. 

The results of the preaching in Antioch were the 
rejection of the Gospel by the Jews, 44 contradicting 
and blaspheming; " in consequence, the declaration 
of a special mission to the Gentiles; thereupon the 
conversion of as many as were disposed to eternal 
life (Variorum Bible, Variorum rendering), accom- 
panied with joy and the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

Many times in Luke's history the marvels of Paul's 
mission are left enshrined in few and simple words. 
We are told for instance (xiv. 1) that Paul and Bar- 
nabas went into the synagogue of Iconium and so 
spake that 44 a great multitude both of the Jews and 
also of the Greeks believed." Later we are told, 
quite incidentally, as it would seem (vs. 21-24), that a 



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church was organized in that city, and that elders or 
bishops were appointed over it. All this is written 
down with no expressions of astonishment. It seems 
that the faith of the ancient Christians was such that 
they were no more surprised at conversions and the 
organization of churches, even in those densely pagan 
lands, than we are at the growing trees and the fruits 
in an orchard. When Christ was presented the cause 
was there ; the effects were a matter of consequence. 

In Iconium, however, persecutions arose, they, too, 
being a matter of consequence, and written down 
with equal calmness. Having tarried " a long time " 
in that city, the apostles finally, when an assault was 
made, fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities far in the 
interior of Lycaonia, or Wolf-land. 

In Lystra the Apostle Paul wrought the miracle 
of healing upon the lame man. He and Barnabas 
were immediately taken by the shallow and impul- 
sive idolaters of the city for their tutelar deities; 
Barnabas for Jupiter, he no doubt making the bet- 
ter personal appearance; and Paul for Mercurius, he 
being the chief speaker, and apparently the servant 
of Barnabas, the greater god. Oxen and garlands 
were brought to the door of the house where they 
were staying, and they would have been worshiped 
with a sacrifice, had they not rebuked the people 
with every demonstration of disapproval and horror, 
rending their clothes, and running in among them ? 
declaring themselves as " men of like passions," and 
preaching to them the vanities of idolatry, and the 



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199 



claims of the true Grod "who made heaven, and 
earth, and the sea, and all that are therein." The 
fickle people were restrained from worshiping them, 
but now, being disillusioned, they were open to the 
advances of Paul's enemies. Persuaded by 44 certain 
Jews who came from Antioch and Iconium," they 
who yesterday would have worshiped Paul, to-day 
stone him and leave him for dead. 44 The missionary 
of the cross," it has been said, 44 is absolutely im- 
mortal till his work is done." As Christ viewed it 3 
as the Holy Spirit viewed it, Paul's work was not 
done, and he was not dead. While they stood round 
him, he rose up, and presently he went with them 
into the city. The next day he and Barnabas went 
to Derbe, where they made many disciples (Vario- 
rum Bible), and from which they returned by the way 
of Lystra, and Iconium, and Antioch, 44 confirming 
the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to 
continue in the faith, and that we must through 
much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." 

Verse twenty-three of chapter fourteen, should be 
noted for its bearing upon the primary steps in the 
organization of the Pauline churches. A plurality of 
44 elders" or 44 bishops " (xx. 28; Titus i. 5 and 7), 
was 44 ordained " or 44 elected " (Variorum rendering) 
in every city. 

Were these apostles heroes? They went directly 
back to the cities in which they had been persecuted 
and stoned. They went customarily into the syna- 
gogues of their brethren by blood, and preached doc- 



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trines that they knew to be revolutionary and unpal- 
atable ; they hazarded their lives in the defense of 
their faith, and in the confirmation of their newly- 
baptized brethren. Admiration for their noble ten- 
acity of purpose, the solicitude of their watch-care, 
and the tenderness of their love, cannot be kept 
within small bounds. 

Having returned to their home church in Antioch, 
they gave a missionary rehearsal, the first of which 
we have any record, unless it be that of the Apostle 
Peter upon his return from the home of Cornelius. 
In sending out her chiefest teachers as missionaries, 
the Antioch Church proved her apostolicity. In 
gathering together to hear from her missionaries " all 
that God had done," and " how he had opened the 
door of faith unto the Gentiles," she proved by her 
interest that her spirit was the spirit of Him who 
died for all men. And still, as of old, the church that 
is truly apostolic speeds away the representatives of 
Christ and herself to far-off lands, and welcomes 
also her returning missionaries, and hears with 
joy the story of their achievements. Forever and 
forever, the church that intelligently and truthfully 
calls herself apostolic must hear and heed the com- 
mand, " Go ye into all the world and preach the 
Gospel." And forever, except for such obedience, 
the true church must realize the blasphemy of claim- 
ing the promise, " Lo, I am with you always." 



X. 

THE FIRST CHURCH COUNCIL 



"This little picture marks the beginning of Christian liberty. 
A wrong step here, and Christian liberty would have been lost. 
Paul was raised up at the very moment of time. He who made 
havoc of the church kept it together; it was an arm terrific; — 
whether to strike or to build its energy was superhuman. Paul 
enlightened the whole church — even James himself became almost 
a poet under the inspiration of this new voice. "—Joseph Parker. 

202 



X. 



THE FIRST CHRUCH COUNCIL. 

"The apostles and elders and brethren (in other words, the whole 
church, see verse 22) send greeting unto the brethren who are of the 
Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia ; Forasmuch as we have 
learned that certain who went out from us have troubled you with 
words, subverting your souls; to whom we gave no such command- 
ment ; it seemed good unto us, having come to one accord, to 
choose out men and send unto you, with our beloved Barnabas and 
Paul, men that have hazarded their lives for the name of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. We have sent, therefore, Judas and Silas, who them- 
selves also shall tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it 
seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no 
greater burden than these necessary things: that ye abstain from 
things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things stran- 
gled, and from fornication ; from which if ye keep yourselves, it 
shall be well with you. Fare ye well." — Acts xv. 23-29. 

Neander calls this the first public document of 
the Christian church. It is the expression of a vic- 
tory and a compromise. To appreciate the victory 
it is necessary to re mem her that there was a party 
of the circumcision, Judaizers, Pharisee saints, in 
the Jerusalem church. When the Apostle Peter 
returned from Csesarea after the conversion of Cor- 
nelius, "They that were of the circumcision con- 
tended with him, saying, Thou wentest in to men 
uncircumcised and didst eat with them." This 
phrase, "They that were of the circumcision," is 
Luke's gentle designation of the party. All the 

203 



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members of the Jerusalem church were circumcised, 
but they were not all champions of circumcision as a 
condition of salvation. For the time being these par- 
tisans were silenced by Peter's statement of the case, 
and especially by his argument based upon the fact 
that the Holy Spirit had been given to Cornelius and 
his household. But they were the professional heresy- 
hunters of the church, and, like all such characters, 
they evidently felt that to them was committed the 
keeping of the faith, and that they must " contend 
earnestly for it." They were silenced, but only for a 
season. Biding their time, they at last hit upon the 
supreme opportunity for mischief-making in the Gen- 
tile church in Antioch. They went down, presumably 
with authority from the apostles, and said, " Except 
ye be circumcised, after the manner of Moses, ye 
cannot be saved " (xv. 1). 

It was a square issue, for Paul and Barnabas had 
been teaching otherwise. Was Christianity to be the 
religion of mankind, or was it to settle back into an 
ethnic cult, a scarcely improved form of Mosaism, a 
new patch on the old garment, with "rents made 
worse?" It was the old, old question that we have 
constantly to face, the question between men of 
the letter and men of the spirit; the question be- 
tween stagnation and progress, between formalism 
and freedom, between legalism and love. And 
further, it was a question between era and era in his- 
tory; between dispensation and dispensation in the 
providence of God; and finally, between the prophets 



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205 



of God speaking with a transient voice, and the Son 
of God, who is the Alpha and Omega, whose yea is 
yea, and whose nay is nay for evermore. 

Surely if ever literalists and legalists had a strong 
case it was this. Were the thunderings upon Mount 
Sinai to be forgotten? Were the blessings upon 
Gerizim and the curses upon Ebal no longer to be 
courted and dreaded? Were not the Sabbaths of 
Israel and their passovers and their circumcision to 
be observed "throughout all their generations?" 
Was not Moses sent of God? Could the moral law 
be done away, and was not the ceremonial law done 
up with it verse by verse? Should the phylacteries 
upon their door posts and the rolls of their Torah 
be thrown to the ash pit, and that by men who had 
no new Torah in their hands, but only a word upon 
their lips? Was the Holy City to lose her prestige, 
and was the hated Gerizim after all, or Antioch, or 
any other place, to become quite as acceptable to 
Jehovah as the place toward which his people had 
turned their faces in prayer through many genera- 
tions? In short, were the chosen people to be no 
longer the chosen people? and were their sacred 
places, their sacred books, their sacred days, and 
their sacred names to go for naught? 

And how could Paul meet such appeals to law and 
custom and prestige except by what would surely 
seem to his opponents as forced interpretations of 
passages from the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah 
and Hosea; or by an appeal to the fact of Gentile 



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conversions, with the evident fruits of the Spirit 
aside from the law, an argument easily depreciated 
by legalists; or by pleading the supremacy of Jesus, 
in which case his opponents could readily show to 
their own satisfaction that Jesus indorsed the author- 
ity of Moses, having, as was supposed, lived in 
conformity to the law of Moses? 

It was one of those cases in which the soul of the 
prophet rises up to the intuitive perception of what 
is right, and in spite of law and logic says, "You are 
wrong; the heart also has its logic; the Holy Spirit 
speaks ; here are my facts fronting your syllogisms ; 
what will you do? " 

"When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small 
dissension and disputation with them, they deter- 
mined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of 
them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles 
and elders about this question." In this appeal 
Jerusalem is recognized, according to Prof. W. M. 
Kamsay, as "the administrative center of the 
church." The appeal is appropriate also in view 
of the claim by the Judaizers that they were com- 
missioned by the apostles (xv. 24). As indicating 
the urgency of the case, and the baleful influence of 
the Judaizers, it should be remembered that Peter, 
when he was in Antioch, was won over by them, 
and that even Barnabas "was carried away by their 
dissimulation." Paul alone stood firm. His quick 
and incisive rebuke had its effect on Peter. " I said 
to Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, 



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207 



livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the 
Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do 
the Jews? " (Gal. ii. 14). This happened, according 
to Prof. Eamsay, before the council in Jerusalem, 
and not, as most critics suppose, afterward, and the 
adjustment helps to clear up several hard questions. 
Every indication therefore is that the Antioch church 
was disturbed to its very center, and since that 
church was the mother of Gentile Christianity the 
whole of the Apostle Paul's movement in behalf 
of a cosmopolitan faith was endangered. 

To Paul the period of waiting for the decision 
of the council must have been a season of anxiety. 
Should the case go against him it involved one 
of two consequences, either a schism in the church, 
or a shrinking back of the Faith from her youth and 
vigor and expansion like an old and lifeless wine into 
an old and worthless skin. "Paul would rather 
have died," says Farrar, " would rather have suffered 
a schism between the Church of Jerusalem and the 
churches of her Gentile converts, than admit that 
there could be no salvation out of the pale of 
Mosaism. ... He intended, at all costs, by 
almost unlimited concessions in the case of indi- 
viduals (referring to the circumcision of Timothy 
and Titus), by unflinching resistance when princi- 
ples were endangered, to establish, as far at any rate 
as the Gentiles were concerned, the truth that Christ 
had obliterated the handwriting in force against us, 



208 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



and had taken it out of the way, nailing the torn 
fragments of its decrees to his cross." 

The debate came on, and there was "much dis- 
puting." The "false brethren" were there with 
every advantage of local associations, national preju- 
dices, centuries of history, the written law with its 
positive injunctions for all generations, and, more 
than likely, with warnings of persecution from with- 
out should a word be spoken against the law of 
Moses or their Holy Place. But the Apostle Peter 
rose up, and true to his Pentecost courage and 
inspiration repeated his experiences in Cassarea ten 
years before. He appealed to the witness of the 
Holy Spirit on that occasion in the acceptance of the 
Gentiles, and challenged them to put a yoke upon 
the neck of the Gentiles, which, he said, "neither 
we nor our fathers were able to bear." Thereupon, 
in true Pauline style, he declared that the grace of 
the Lord Jesus Christ is the only ground of salvation 
for Jews and Gentiles. There were times when 
Jesus spoke in such a fashion that no man answered 
him a word, and the Apostle Peter seems to have 
learned from the Master something of that power of 
speech which leaves an opponent unmasked and non- 
plused. "Then all the multitude kept silence," till 
at last Barnabas and Paul rose, "declaring what 
miracles and wonders God had wrought among the 
Gentiles by them." Thus were the hard and fast 
theologians of the day, the men with an a priori 
creed, cast iron, and all but the "anathema sit" to 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



209 



it, the men rooted and grounded in their grand- 
fathers' ways, thoroughly honest, thoroughly logical, 
thoroughly stubborn, the typical, self-appointed con- 
servators of the faith, the anti-progressives, knife in 
hand — thus were they smitten with facts. Peter and 
Paul and Barnabas united in putting Csesarea and 
Antioch and Derbe and Lystra and Iconium over 
against Mount Sinai. In all these places God had 
spoken through the Holy Spirit, receiving the Gen- 
tiles, no knife in hand. Traditional prejudice must 
give way to received practice; a priori theories to 
the logic of facts; God's ancient law engraved on 
stone to his latest word written upon fleshly tables 
of the heart; the carnal to the spiritual, shadow to 
substance, type to anti-type. Peter and Paul and 
Barnabas pursued the inductive method, collating 
facts, treating them as legal tender, and upon them 
basing conclusions, thus anticipating the Baconian 
method by sixteen centuries. They were the three 
mighty Protestants of the ancient church. 

Last of all James spoke. He was the most inter- 
esting figure in the council. As "the brother of the 
Lord," he would be looked upon with loving rever- 
ence; as the bishop of the church in Jerusalem, his 
word would be final, not as dictatorial but as repre- 
sentative; as a man of extreme holiness, he would be 
honored by all parties. "Tradition," says Farrar, 
"as embodied in an Ebionite romance, represents 
him as wearing no wool, but clothed in fine white 
linen from head to foot, and — either from some 

14 



210 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



priestly element in his genealogy, or to symbolize his 
episcopate in Jerusalem — as wearing on his forehead 
the petalon, or golden plate of high priesthood. It 
is said that he was so holy and so highly esteemed by 
the whole Jewish people that he alone was allowed, 
like the high priest, to enter the Holy Place ; that he 
lived a celibate and ascetic life; that he spent long 
hours alone in the temple praying for the people, till 
his knees became hard and callous like those of a 
camel ; that he had the power of working miracles ; 
that rain fell in accordance with his prayers; that it 
was owing to his prayers that God's impending wrath 
was averted from the nation; that he received the 
title of 'The Just,' and 'Rampart of the People,' and 
that he was shadowed forth in the images of the 
prophets." 

Such was the traditional man, perhaps not very 
unlike the real man, who now rose to speak. Having 
first commanded a hearing, he indorsed the speech 
that Peter had just made, fortifying it with a proph- 
ecy from Amos, quoted from the Septuagint, and 
declaring that the reception of the Gentiles, recently 
wrought by the Holy Spirit through Peter and Paul 
and Barnabas, was in the plans of God from the 
beginning. Whereupon he gave his sentence that 
the Gentiles should not he troubled, that is, by the 
Judaizers, but that they should be exhorted to 
abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornica- 
tion, and from things strangled, and from blood. 
The last sentence of this speech (verse 21) contains 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



211 



a double argument for the proposed compromise. 
First, because Moses was read in the synagogue every 
Sabbath the Jews need not fear for the law; the 
apostles to the Gentiles were not interfering with this 
arrangement; secondly, because this was the case the 
Gentiles should be the more ready to abstain from 
these, to the Jews, most shocking things. That for- 
nication and idolatry should be coupled together 
seems inevitable when it is remembered that much of 
the pagan worship was accompanied with the vilest 
orgies; that the worship of Venus under various 
forms and names was widespread, and that in 
Cyprus, the ancient center of her worship, the pollu- 
tions accompanying it became a scandal even to the 
surrounding pagan countries. The thing here con- 
demned as a sin both by the legal and instinctive 
purity of Judaism, coupled with Christian sanctions, 
was in all that pagan world "so completely a matter 
of indifference that Socrates has no censure for it, 
and Cicero declares that no pagan moralist ever 
dreamed of meeting it with an absolute prohibition." 
Here is one of the great secrets of both Jewish and 
Christian antagonism to idolatry, and the modern 
Parliaments of Keligion that cover up or condone the 
same pollutions existing rampant in the Buddhistic 
and Brahmanistic cults of this day, will probably not 
get very far on the road toward harmonizing the 
ancient Hebrew purity, still cardinal in Christianity, 
with the ancient idolatrous impurity, still a factor of 
pagan worship. 



212 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



"The apostles and elders and the whole church" 
agreed to the compromise proposed by James, and 
wrote to the Gentiles in Antioch a delightfully fra- 
ternal letter, and sent it by the hands of Barnabas 
and Paul, accompanied by two of their own chief 
men, Judas and Silas, who were instructed to teach 
the same things by word of mouth, which, being 
prophets, they did with much exhortation. When 
the letter was read to the Christians of Antioch, they 
4 'rejoiced for the consolation." 

Four points are to be noted: First, The decision 
was a triumph for the Apostle Paul and his co-work- 
ers. They could now go out into the Gentile world 
and preach the Gospel as free from the fetters of 
legalism as though they were presenting mathemat- 
ical axioms. It is true that the great apostle was 
followed and troubled by Judaizers as long as he 
lived, but they could never again claim the authority 
of the Jerusalem church. As this Judaizing party 
was the occasion of the first church council, and con- 
sequently of the first document of the Christian 
church, so by its persistence it occasioned the major 
part of the literature that we owe to the Apostle 
Paul. Galatians and Romans cannot be understood 
aside from this controversy. It appears also in 
First and Second Corinthians, and in Ephesians, and 
Colossians, and Philippians, and First Thessalonians. 
To the end this great man remained true to the trust 
that Christ had committed to him, as to a "chosen 
vessel," the trust of Gospel truth and Gospel love 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



213 



and Gospel liberty; and when he penned his farewell 
to Timothy he had two things upon which justly to 
congratulate himself — he had "fought a good fight" 
(with Judaizers, no doubt), and he had kept " the 
faith." 

Secondly, The decision, like most compromises, 
was but a temporary settlement of the dispute. 
De Pressense, quoted by Prof. B. A. Hinsdale, says: 
"The barrier was lowered, not removed. Thus, no 
sooner was the decision communicated, than it re- 
ceived various interpretations. Paul drew from it 
inferences which were undoubtedly by implication 
contained in it, but which were not equally evident to 
the minds of all." Several questions of importance 
were not touched upon in the decision; the relation 
of the Jewish Christians themselves to the Mosaic 
law was very prudently left in abeyance ; likewise the 
social relations of Jewish and Gentile Christians; 
these and some other questions, such as the release 
of all Christians from the Jewish altar worship, and 
cleansings, and fasts, and Sabbaths, were left to be 
wrought out for us by the Apostle Paul's incisive dis- 
tinctions between Moses and Christ, between the law 
and the Gospel, the former as preparatory and tem- 
porary, the latter as all-sufficient and final. The 
tenacity of the Judaizing party for the law of their 
fathers is most pathetic. Spite of the decision of 
the council, aud the sanction of the Holy Spirit in 
the reception of Gentiles, and Christ's formally de- 
clared supremacy, they could not seem to get over 



214 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



their fondness for the letter of the law. God's final 
warnings to them in the utter destruction of Jerusa- 
lem, and the temple, and the altar forms of worship 
there, were unheeded. They continued their opposi- 
tion to the progressive forms of the faith until they 
fell logically into the heresy of denying the divine 
nature of Jesus; they branded the Apostle Paul as a 
heretic, and became themselves the Ebionite secta- 
rians of the first and second centuries, and dwindled 
by the middle of the latter century into insignifi- 
cance. 

Thirdly, This council was thoroughly democratic. 
Grant that the reading " and brethren," in the twen- 
ty-third verse is a corruption; yet the democratic 
character of the council is shown by the twenty- 
second verse, which reads: "Then pleased it the 
apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send 
chosen men of their own company to Arftioch with 
Paul and Barnabas." No one assumed autocratic 
authority. Even Peter is designated in the speech 
of James by his old, unapostolic name, Simeon. 
Perhaps it is for these reasons that Farrar contends 
that the council was not a council at all. According 
to the Anglican and Romish notions of a council 
as being thoroughly aristocratic, the laity and infe- 
rior orders of the clergy not being admitted, this 
was not a council. But if open debate in the spirit 
of the Holy Spirit with the right of suffrage ex- 
tended to all; if a decision arrived at by " the com- 
mon sense of most;" if, in short, brotherly counsels 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



215 



and brotherly conclusions constitute a council, this 
was a council. 

Lastly, As the presence of sin magnifies the work- 
ings of grace, so the intensity of Judaism magnifies 
the Christly charity and liberty of the Jerusalem 
church. Even as a compromise, the decision is won- 
derful. James and others must have felt that it 
broke the trend of the centuries. It was revolution- 
ary, and they knew that to the Jews as a nation, it 
would appear as a denial of the faith of their fath- 
ers. It was a reverent and painful slap in the face 
of tradition. But the Holy Spirit, genius and guide 
of the new age, was imperious; he demanded this 
break in the centuries, and to him the church was 
loyal. This was an hour freighted with destinies, 
and these men were fitted for the emergency by "the 
power from on high." How reverently they couch 
their decision ! And what historic majesty there is 
in it! " It seemed good to the Holy Spirit — and to 
us!" 



XI. 

THE FIRST MISSIONARY JOURNEY IN EUROPE 



"Where should Paul be studied, loved and venerated if not in 
England? Are not English Christians in a very special sense his 
spiritual children? Do they not owe to him the character of their 
religion, the form of their doctrine, even their principles of religious 
liberty and civil right ? Is not Anglo-Saxon society his work ? 
Does not his spirit pervade the thousand ramifications of English 
civilization, extending from individual conduct to the highest scien- 
tific activity, and from domestic life to political debates in Parlia- 
ment ? " — Sahatier. 

"All zones are one seed -field, 
And one the fostering sky; 
Best germs the ripened ages yield 
On world-wide pinions fly."— Joseph Cook. 
218 



XI. 



THE FIRST MISSIONARY JOURNEY IN EUROPE. 

"And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man 
of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia 
and help us." — Acts xvi. 9. 

This vision has the strangeness of romance, the 
sternness of history, and the pathos of prayer. It is 
the way by which the Holy Spirit signifies to Paul 
that he has been appointed as the actor in a new 
march of events. The waves of Gospel influence 
must be kept rolling outward, and this is the signal 
for an advance. Jerusalem, Judsea, Samaria, the 
uttermost parts of the earth (Acts i. 8) — that is the 
Savior's programme; and the Apostle Paul, guided 
by the Holy Spirit, has now the primacy in carrying 
it out. Peter is not again named in Acts; Jerusalem 
has already become second to Antioch; the work of 
Barnabas even, is left in obscurity, and the historian 
deals only with this foremost man upon the foremost 
confines of the pagan world. 

Twice the Holy Spirit interfered with Paul's plans 
before the directing vision was granted him. When 
he had "made a missionary progress" throughout 
Phrygia and the region of Galatia, he evidently de- 
sired to preach in "Asia," but the Holy Spirit for- 
bade him ( ch. xvi. 6). Then he wanted to go 

219 



220 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



into Bithynia, 44 and the Spirit suffered him not." 
So passing through Mysia, and at the same time pass- 
ing it by, he came down to Troas. Paul's traveling 
companions at this time were Silas, who accompanied 
him from the home church in Antioch, and Timothy, 
a son in the Gospel, whose home was in Lystra, 
whose mother was a Jewess, whose father was a 
Greek, and whom Paul circumcised, not as a matter 
of compulsion but of concession. 

At Troas, however, a third companion announces 
his presence in the briefest and least pretentious of all 
imaginable ways. He simply says "we" (xvi. 10) — , 
and then goes on writing about the whole company. 
In this way the writer of Acts identifies himself with 
the history he relates. Paul is his hero, and he but 
the humblest of fellow-workers. It is a shrewd and 
very interesting guess of Prof. Ramsay's, that Luke 
was a Macedonian; that being a physician he had 
come to Troas on business; that through professional 
services he became acquainted with Paul, and was 
converted; that he himself was the 4 'man of Mace- 
donia " whom Paul saw in a vision; that Philippi was 
his home, and that he was Paul's first host and 
helper in this, the first city in that part of Mace- 
donia. 

The Apostle Paul's voyage across the iEgean Sea 
must have seemed to him like a progress merely from 
province to province. All that world was Eome, and 
all these provinces were hers. But as we see it his 
voyage was from continent to continent, so does the 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



221 



perspective of centuries enlarge rather than diminish 
the plans of Providence. The following paragraph, 
from an eloquent lecture by Joseph Cook, will help 
us to seize upon the historic significance of the call of 
the 4 'man from Macedonia:" 

''Before the battles of Marathon and Salamis, Asia 
predominated in the world's affairs. Since those 
contests she has always held a second rank. This 
steel-gray narrow sheet of murmurous salt water has 
been thus visibly touched in human history by that 
finger at whose contact the hills melt aud the moun- 
tains smoke; and, therefore, even after 2,300 years 
the waves flash here, between the bleak, rocky 
shores, with a light better than that of the sun. 
Greek civilization, on that great day when the women 
on Salamis, according to the prophecy, boiled their 
meat with broken oars, was in process of preserva- 
tion for you and me. And among the corpses which 
shut out the moonlight from the depths of this clear 
water on the night after the battle, the plans of Prov- 
idence for the education of Rome, of London, of 
Paris, and of Boston were advancing." 

Troas and Neapolis, therefore, are only dots on the 
map ; in the larger sense, quite literally, the Apostle 
Paul set sail from Asia and landed in Europe, and 
the ship that bore him carried a more precious freight 
by far than was ever borne by the fleets and trans- 
ports of Xerxes, or Philip of Macedon, or Alexan- 
der, or any of the Caesars. Beyond Macedonia was 
Rome; and beyond Rome, Germany; and beyond 



222 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



Germany, Britain; and beyond Britain, America; and 
still beyond America, an Asia that was not in the 
dreams even of the greatest of the Caesars. And 
toward all these nations the face of Paul was turned, 
though he knew it not; and through him westward 
the Gospel was destined to take its course, guiding 
and inspiring the course of empire, till it should en- 
compass the earth. What mighty works were yet to 
be wrought by Greece and Rome, and by the bar- 
barians that Caesar presumed to have conquered! 
What battles and victories! What governments, civ- 
ilizations, progress! What mistakes, sorrows, revo- 
lutions and triumphs, both of war and peace ! And 
the " man of Macedon " uttered the cry of deepest 
need, and the pathetic prayer of all these ''kindreds 
and tongues and peoples and nations " through their 
centuries of straggle when he said to the missionary 
of the cross, "Come over and help us." 

It was an ancient custom of the Jews to meet by a 
river side for prayer when no synagogue was at hand. 
One of the exiles of the great captivity sang : 

" By the rivers of Babylon, 
There we sat down, yea we wept 
When we remembered Zion; 

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof ; 
For there they that carried us away captive, 
Required of us mirth, saying, 
Sing us one of the songs of Zion." 

Finding, as it would seem, no synagogue in the 
city of Philippi, Paul and Luke, therefore, on the 
Sabbath sought the customary place of prayer by the 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



223 



river. There they found Lydia, "a seller of pur- 
ple," and her household, worshiping God. The 
Lord opened her heart; she attended to the things 
that Paul spoke; she was baptized, and her house- 
hold. Luke's record of this first conversion in 
Europe (xvi. 14, 15) is precise, unadorned, and beau- 
tiful. It is his style to state facts; he seeks little 
from the arts of rhetoric; but here in the statement 
of the fact he produces a picture, and the circum- 
stances and the associations unite in giving to it the 
character and the sacredness of an ancient master- 
piece. There is no incompleteness about it. There 
is the place and the spirit of prayer; there is the 
preacher and his audience; there is the declaration of 
the Gospel and its confession in baptism; there is the 
sisterly hospitality that springs from gratitude for 
the gift of faith and hope and love. And all this is 
set within the somber background of Greek and 
Roman history. The city was named for Philip, the 
father of Alexander the Great, and was a monument 
of his empire. A hundred and sixty-eight years 
before Christ it fell into the hands of Rome. Ninety- 
four years before the visit of Paul, not far from 
Lydia's place of prayer, occurred the battle of 
Philippi, which decided the fate of the republic of 
Rome, and introduced the imperial system. Here 
Cassius and Brutus committed suicide, the former 
before, the latter after the battle was lost. But in 
this humble baptism there was the beginning of a 
mightier and more beneficent movement for Europe 



224 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



and the world than could possibly spring from the 
battlefields of Greece and Rome. One cannot for- 
bear the reflection that perhaps the nearest approach 
in modern times, as regards historic interest, to this 
baptism in the Gangites was that one in the Ganges, 
when, in the year 1800, on Christmas day, Chrishna 
Pal confessed in his body, at the hands of William 
Carey, the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

Dr. J. M. Stifler has an interesting suggestion in 
explanation of Luke's care in describing this conver- 
sion: "Since the beginning of a new stage finds 
record here, we have some repetitions of features 
seen before. Years have passed away, the Gospel 
has spread far and wide, but baptism has not been 
mentioned since the story looked at Peter in the 
household of Cornelius. When the Gentile work 
began it was necessary to show that baptism would 
attend it, but after that mention there is no other till 
we come to the household of Lydia and the jailer. 
For here again we are at the center of a new circle." 

The same author brings together other parallels 
that are interesting. "Samaria triumphed over 
Simon Magus. Paphos left Elymas groping in blind- 
ness. The strong man armed is again encountered 
(referring to ch. xvi. 16-18), only to suffer the spoil 
of another of his chattels. The meeting of an evil 
spirit on the entrance of the Gospel into Europe, is 
in harmony with the cases above cited, is in harmony 
with the hindrances of divine grace from the dawn 
of history. Satan blocks the way as soon as it is 



STUDIES IN ACTS 225 

entered." This insane slave-girl, ventriloquist and 
soothsayer, is another example of those numerous 
" dabblers in the black art " that belong to the times 
of Paul. Of course her advertisement of Paul and 
his missionary co-workers as the servants of the most 
high God, and the preachers of the way of salvation, 
was such as to bring the sobriety and dignity of the 
Gospel into disrepute. The triners of the city must 
have jeered continually at seeing this crazy girl fol- 
lowing the missionaries, and calling after them. At 
last Paul rebuked the spirit, and healed her. This 
destroyed her commercial value, and brought down 
upon him the persecution of her owners, for there 
were not wanting men so mean as to make specula- 
tion out of such maladies, and people so superstitious 
as to pay the price of such fortune telling. It was 
easy to call out the mob by shouting that the customs 
of the Romans were endangered, and the result was 
that Paul and Silas were beaten and imprisoned. 
This gave the occasion for the midnight prayer and 
praise meeting in the prison; the earthquake; the 
opening of the prison doors; the loosing of the pris- 
oners; the jailer's intention to kill himself, suppos- 
ing his prisoners were gone; Paul's gracious inter- 
ference and timely preaching, and the conversion of 
a household the same hour of the night. 

The immersion of the jailer and his household 
offers no difficulties to scholarly exegetes. " The 
rite may have been performed," says DeWette, " in 
the same fountain or tank in which the jailer had 

15 



226 STUDIES IN ACTS 

• 

washed them." Meyer, as quoted by Hackett, sug- 
gests that the water was in the court of the house ; 
and that the baptism was that of immersion, which, 
he says, ''formed an essential part of the symbolism 
of the act." The fact that the jailer brought them 
out of the prison before their baptism and that they 
did not come into his house till after it had taken 
place is favorable to immersion rather than affusion, 
for the latter could most likely have been performed 
either in the prison or the house, as also the washing 
of their stripes. 

A manly trait in the character of Paul is shown in 
that he refused to go secretly away bearing the 
wounds and humiliation of his unjustified whipping. 
The lictors sent, saying, " Let these men go." " Nay 
verily," said Paul. "We are Romans; we are un- 
condemned; they have beaten us; they shall not 
thrust us out privily; let them come themselves and 
fetch us out." Paul gloried in necessary sufferings 
for Christ's sake, and he never murmured at persecu- 
tions incurred in the way of duty; but he was a 
stranger to monkish asceticism, and superstitious 
trust in the meritoriousness of penances would have 
been a horror to his transparent soul. 

The next church established by Paul was in the 
city of Thessalonica. This city was named after 
a sister of Alexander the Great ; it was on the direct 
road from Philippi to Rome; it was situated at the 
head of the Thermaic Gulf, and has been an impor- 
tant point from Paul's day to our own. To the 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



227 



apostle this was one of the most satisfactory of all 
the churches. His first letters were written to it; 
he comforts the members of it in their persecutions ; 
exhorts them to rejoice unceasingly; assures them of 
his deep love, and while praying for them, craves 
their prayers. 

In Berea the apostle found exceptional Jews, 
"more noble than those in Thessalonica," in that 
they readily received the word, and candidly exam- 
ined the Scriptures to confirm it. To the great mis- 
sionary this experience must have been as delightful 
as it was rare; but the inevitable happened. Mali- 
cious Jews from Thessalonica followed him, and 
again, as usual, he was persecuted and driven out. 

Athens has an imperishable charm for the student. 
It was the birthplace of Greek history and philosophy 
and rhetoric. Immortal names are associated with it, 
and the masterpieces of their genius are the admira- 
tion of the centuries. "Were Plato, Socrates, and 
Demosthenes the only forms visible from the Acrop- 
olis, that eminence would be the loftiest outlook on 
the globe over human intellectual history. At the 
west summit of the Parthenon there is a point from 
which are visible the groves of Plato's Academy, the 
daily haunts of Socrates, the Pnyx of Demosthenes, 
the grounds of the Lyceum of Aristotle, the Mars' 
Hill of Paul, the Propylea of Phidias and Pericles, — 
the theatre of iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, — 
the mountain slope once the seat of Xerxes, — the 
path to Marathon of Miltiades, and the Salamis 



228 STUDIES IN ACTS 

straits of Aristides and Themistocles." In the time 
of Paul Athens was the home of philosophy and 
frivolity, of art and idolatry. Petronius says it was 
more easy to meet a god than a man in Athens. 
4 'There were more statues in Athens than in all the 
rest of Greece put together." All this would be the 
more displeasing to Paul since he was trained in a 
school that prohibited the representation in art of 
the human form. And besides, the conventional 
nudity of Grecian art must have seemed a shocking 
degradation to the severely chaste and lofty morals 
of the Hebrew missionary. "It is all very well," 
says Farrar, "for sentimentalists to sigh over 'the 
beauty that was Greece, and the glory that was 
Eome; ' but paganism had a very ragged edge, and it 
was this that Paul daily witnessed. . . . Perfect- 
ness of sculpture might have been impossible without 
the nude athleticism that ministers to vice. For one 
who placed the sublimity of manhood in perfect 
obedience to the moral law, for one to whom purity 
and self-control were elements of the only supreme 
ideal, it was in that age impossible to love, impossi- 
ble to regard even with complacence, an art which 
was avowedly the handmaid of idolatry, and covertly 
the patroness of shame. Our regret for the extin- 
guished brilliancy of Athens will be less keen when 
we bear in mind that more than any other city she 
has been the corruptress of the world." 

Thus Paul confronted art in Athens, while in the 
persons of the Epicureans and the Stoics he encoun- 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



229 



tered philosophy. The former were materialistic and 
therefore practically atheistic; they sought pleasure 
as the highest good, and descended into the pathways 
of sensuality in their search. The substance of their 
beastly teaching is put in a single phrase by Paul in 
the fifteenth chapter of I. Corinthians, when, upon 
the supposition that Christianity is false and the dead 
rise not, he says, "Let us eat and drink, for to-mor- 
row we die." 

Considering Stoicism as the noblest of the Greek 
philosophies, it was nevertheless fatalistic and panthe- 
istic. The Stoics aimed at a laudable self-control, 
but ended in heartless indifference to the conditions 
around them, and in the justification of suicide. Of 
the Christian's Godward trust and manward sympa- 
thy they knew nothing, and the trend of their teach- 
ing was the direct antithesis of Christian altruism. 
For four hundred years these systems of thought had 
been uppermost in Athens, and at last they had 
degenerated, the one into "the apotheosis of sui- 
cide," the other into "the glorification of lust." 

From every humane and beneficent standpoint the 
failure of the philosophy and art of Athens is con- 
spicuous. They had filled the city with idols and 
idlers; with a university of philosophic triflers, and a 
population of news-mongers; with voluptuous priests 
and unknown gods. The best name that such a peo- 
ple could find for so great and serious a soul as 
Paul was a piece of their street slang; they called 
him " Spermologus," by which they meant almost 



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any amount of contempt, a babbler, a seed-picker, 
44 an ignorant plagiarist," a worthless fellow with, 
scraps of learning. However, he had something new 
to tell them, and so they took hold of him and 
brought him to the Areopagus, not necessarily to 
Mars' Hill, but to their highest court, and not for a 
court trial, but for the sake of curiosity. 

In the city of Socrates Paul had adopted the So- 
cratic method; he had gone about the streets engag- 
ing this one and that one in conversation. But Athens 
was also the city of Demosthenes, and the Areopagus 
demanded of him an oration. By his courtly and 
undaunted bearing he plainly said in the presence of 
these degenerate descendants of great thinkers, "X 
am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ." We know 
that the orations of Demosthenes have lived; we 
know that this sermon of Paul's will live. The 
grouping of his thoughts, the delicacy and daring of 
his polemics, and the novelty of his theme must have 
been alike startling to his Athenian auditors, as they 
are the admiration of his latest readers. The tact 
and dignity of his introduction are spoiled by the 
King James translators, for Paul would not have in- 
sulted an Athenian audience to begin with by calling 
them superstitious. Such bluntness and bungling 
would not be in keeping with his genteel rule of 
" becoming all things to all men that he might by all 
means save some." 

This, rather, is his introduction: "Men of Athens, 
I perceive that you carry your religious reverence 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



231 



very far, for as I passed by I beheld an altar with 
this inscription, To an Unknown God. What there- 
fore ye worship in ignorance, this set I forth unto 
you." 

Having seized this text from one of their own 
altars, he seized also a quotation from one of their 
own poets, and upon this double basis chosen in 
common with them he declared that the God con- 
fessedly unknown to them is Creator and Father, 
indirectly rebuking in this double proposition the 
pantheism of the Stoics, the practical atheism of the 
Epicureans, the polytheism of the people, and the 
pride of caste and race that belonged to every Greek. 
He made the search for God the object of existence, 
thus rebuking their contention that pleasure is the 
highest good. By making the worship of God a 
matter not of the hands but of the heart of the 
devotee he rebuked the meritoriousness of their sacri- 
ficial cult. By deducing the idea- of the Godhead from 
that of the Fatherhood of God he rebuked a whole city 
full of idols, saying, we ought not to think that what 
is divine is like unto gold or silver or stone graven by 
art or man's device. In conclusion he made a direct 
application, calling upon them to repent, and warn- 
ing them of the righteous judgment of God; and all 
in all, both warning and pleading were based upon 
the fact of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. 

At this the more frivolous mocked, and the more 
seemingly sober said, Felix-like, "We will hear thee 
again of this matter." 



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One Areopagite believed, Dionysius by name; and 
one woman, Damaris by name. Was this then the 
result of Paul's mission to Athens, "The eye of 
Greece," " The pride of the world?" A city full of 
babblers mistaking Paul for a babbler! One is re- 
minded of Carlyle's fable, adopted from the Koran, 
of men turned to apes, and " gibbering very genuine 
nonsense, there by the Dead Sea." But this was not 
the whole result. Could Paul have foreseen the 
church that afterwards grew up in Athens; the van- 
ishing of her gods as though smitten by magic ; the 
giving of her sons and daughters in Christian mar- 
tyrdom; and the bishops that were trained in her 
Christian schools, he would not have gone so sadly 
away, and we can imagine him exclaiming in antici- 
pated triumph, " God hath chosen the foolish things 
of the world to confound the wise; and God hath 
chosen the weak things of the world to confound the 
things that are mighty; and base things of the world, 
and things which are despised, hath God chosen, 
and things which are not, to bring to naught things 
that are; that no flesh should glory in his presence." 

With fine rhetoric, but with pagan rather than 
Christian taste, Renan has apostrophized the smit- 
ten idols of Athens; "Ah, beautiful and chaste 
images; true gods and goddesses, tremble! See the 
man who will raise the hammer against you. The 
fatal word has been pronounced; you are idols. The 
mistake of this ugly little Jew will be your death 
warrant." With vastly finer rhetoric, and with iner- 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



233 



rant Christian taste, Mrs. Browning has sung their 
requiem : 

"Gods of Hellas! gods of Hellas I 
Can ye listen in your silence? 
Can your mystic voices tell us 
Where ye hide? In floating islands, 
With a wind that evermore ! 
Keeps you out of sight of shore? 
Pan, Pan is dead. 

" O twelve gods of Plato's vision, 
Crowned to starry wanderings, — 
With your chariots in procession, 
And your silver clash of wings ! 
Very pale ye seem to rise, 
Ghosts of Grecian deities — 
Now Pan is dead ! 

" Gods ! we vainly do adjure you,— 
Ye return nor voice nor sign ; 
Not a votary could secure you 
Even a grave for your Divine ! 
Not a grave to show thereby, 
Here these gray old gods do lie! 

Pan, Pan is dead." 

Corinth was a city of four hundred thousand peo- 
ple when Paul visited it. A hundred and forty-six 
years before Christ the Eomans had destroyed it; 
but in forty-four before Christ, Julius Cassar, mark- 
ing the importance of its situation, had rebuilt it and 
colonized it. Lying on the highway of travel and 
commerce between the East and the West, it sprang 
into prominence with surprising rapidity, and became 
" The Vanity Fair of the Roman Empire, at once the 
London and the Paris of the first century after 



234 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



Christ." Its wealth and its profligacy were proverb- 
ial, and to its nameless and more degrading vices 
were given by the worship of Venus, the sanctions of 
religion. It had all the traits of a city suddenly 
grown. There were the ugly contrasts between the 
poor, housed in their ancients huts of wood or straw, 
and the rich adventurers of yesterday dwelling in 
palaces adorned with relics from the ancient city, 
and displaying the inevitable arrogance and shallow 
culture of such upstarts. Side by side with the sober 
business man of means, there came the huckster and 
the trickster, and together with the commerce of the 
nations there came the gods of the nations with their 
devotees, their unsavory priests, and their prostitute 
priestesses. Such a city is a great catch-all. Farrar 
says, "It was in the midst of this mongrel and het- 
erogeneous population of Greek adventurers and 
Roman bourgeois, with a tainting infusion of Phoeni- 
cians — this mass of Jews, ex-soldiers, philosophers, 
merchants, sailors, freedmen, slaves, tradespeople, 
hucksters, and agents of every form of vice — a col- 
ony without aristocracy, without traditions, without 
well-established citizens — that the toil-worn Jewish 
wanderer made his way." 

In Corinth the Apostle Paul met Aquila and Pris- 
cilla, Jews, lately driven from Rome by an edict of 
the Emperor Claudius. One cannot but muse upon 
these three wandering and persecuted people estab- 
lishing a home and working together at their com- 
mon trade of tent-making. Perhaps they first met 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



235 



in the synagogue, for there it was not unusual 
for craftsmen to sit together, " silversmiths by 
themselves, and ironworkers by themselves, and 
miners by themselves, and weavers by themselves, 
and when a poor man came there he recognized the 
members of his craft, and went there, and from 
thence was his support, and that of the members of 
his house." Whether in the synagogue, or the home, 
or the prison, Paul was a persistent and tireless mis- 
sionary. These household companions could not live 
with him long without hearing of the Savior. They 
became thoroughly instructed Christians, and accom- 
panied him to Ephesus, and their friendship lasted 
as long as Paul lived. At a later date, in Ephesus 
Aquila and Priscilla found Apollos, an eloquent 
Alexandrian and disciple of John the Baptist, and 
having instructed him perfectly in the way of the 
Gospel, sent him as a preacher to the church in 
Corinth. In Kome at a later date they had a church 
in their house. And still later, once more in Ephe- 
sus, they received through Timothy Paul's last earthly 
greetings. 

In Corinth Paul was persecuted as usual by the 
Jews. The incarnate malice that nailed Jesus to the 
cross never deserted this foremost herald of the 
cross. In Jerusalem, in Pisidian Antioch, in Iconi- 
um, in Lystra, in Thessalonica, in Berea, in Corinth, 
he was "in perils by his own countrymen." Such 
persistent malice would have discouraged or soured 
the spirit of all but the most robust and saintly of 



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saints. His strength came from an unseen source, 
and receiving mercy he fainted not. Two things 
happened in Corinth to comfort him and to prolong 
his stay. In a time of deepest need, the Lord stood 
by him in the night, and said to him, " Be not afraid, 
but speak, and hold not thy peace. For I am with 
thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee; for 
I have much people in this city" (xviii. 9-11). "I 
am with thee." Sustained by such companionship, 
he continued a year and six months teaching the 
word of Grod in Corinth. 

Then befell to his advantage one of those unique 
incidents which are capable of letting us so far into 
the spirit of the times. The Jews attempted an ac- 
cusation of Paul at the judgment seat of Grallio. 
Seneca the philosopher was brother to this noble 
Roman, and said of him: " Those who love him best 
don't love him enough;" and also, "No mortal is 
so sweet to any single person as he is to all man- 
kind." He was the perfection of kindliness, court- 
liness and nobility. After his proconsulship in 
Corinth he attained to the consulship, and there is a 
tradition that he was murdered by Nero. So far as 
concerns our present study, he stands as the repre- 
sentative of the Eoman policy at that time in respect 
to the Jews of the provinces, evidently considering 
Christianity as a phase of Judaism. Looking with 
the undisguised contempt of the typical Roman 
ruler upon everything pertaining to the Jews, he 
drove them from his judgment-seat when they came 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



237 



dragging Paul before him, refusing to be a judge of 
questions of their law. Perhaps Gallio would have 
cared as little had they beaten Paul instead of 
Sosthenes. He simply declined to be troubled by 
them. Perhaps the Greeks joined the proconsul in 
his contempt for the Jews, and may be Paul had won 
some friends among them. But at any rate the non- 
chalance of Gallio and the prankishness of the 
Greeks, put a sudden stop to the persecution of Paul 
" by his own countrymen," and made it possible for 
him to stay "yet a good while " in Corinth, so that 
" many of the Corinthians, hearing, believed, and 
were baptized." 

So far as Luke's record goes, the pioneer mission- 
ary work of the Apostle Paul may be fairly said to 
have ended at Corinth. Upon his third journey he 
did a great and fruitful work, but it was mainly if 
not wholly within the regions covered by the first 
and second journeys. In Eome he was a prisoner 
rather than a pioneer, and besides, others had pre- 
ceded him as preachers in that city. In the spring 
of 53, he set sail from Corinth for Syria, that he 
might attend the Passover of that year in Jerusalem. 
"And when he had landed at Csesarea, and gone up 
and saluted the church, he went down to Antioch." 

Was he coldly received in Jerusalem? Why did 
he hasten away to Antioch? Had Paul's position as 
regards the law caused James and the elders to recoil 
from him? Why was there no gathering of the 
church to receive him as upon a former, and also 



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upon a later, occasion? The silence of Luke throws 
a veil over much. But knowing the Jews we can 
judge much. 

Once again, and once only, at the close of his third 
missionary journey, he visited Jerusalem, saying, " I 
go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the 
things that shall befall me there ; save that the Holy 
Spirit witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and 
afflictions abide me. But none of these things move 
me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that 
I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry 
which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify 
the Gospel of the grace of God." 



XII. 

PAUL'S FIRST IMPRISONMENT IN ROME 



"Not only did Paul conquer the pagan world for Jesus Christ; he 
accomplished a task no less necessary, and perhaps more difficult, in 
emancipating at the same time infant Christianity from Judaism, 
under whose guardianship it was in danger of being stifled. Besides 
removing the center of gravity of the new church, the advance of his 
mission from Jerusalem to Antioch, from Antioch to Ephesus, and 
from Ephesus to Rome, he also succeeded in disengaging from the 
swaddling-bands of Judaism the spiritual and moral principles 
which constitute Christianity a progressive and universal religion." 
— Sabatier. 

240 



XII. 



PAUL'S FIRST IMPRISONMENT IN ROME. 

"I am standing at Cassar's jiidgment seat." — Acts xxv. 10. 

Thus Paul appealed from his Jewish brethren to a 
pagan court, and the greatest of Christian missiona- 
ries placed himself before the highest of political 
tribunals. Two years before he had entered Jerusa- 
lem "bound in the spirit," saying, "I know not the 
things that shall befall me there;" rescued by Lysias 
from the murderous intent of his own people, he left 
the city in the night escorted by a guard of Roman 
soldiers. Felix found no fault in hiin, and Festus, 
successor to Felix in A. D. 60, found no fault in him. 
When the latter proposed to release him from all 
claims of Roman law on condition that he would go 
back to Jerusalem to be tried by the Jews, he, know- 
ing his rights as a Roman citizen, and dreading 
Caesar, though that Caesar chanced to be Nero, less 
than the Sanhedrin, made the memorable appeal 
under which at last he reached Rome. By the 
appeal he gained the continued protection of the 
Roman authorities against the Jews, who, " or ever 
he came near," were ready to kill him. By it also he 
was enabled to carry out his long cherished plan of 
visiting Rome (xix. 21). It mattered little to him 
that he should be carried there in chains, for he 

16 241 



242 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



knew how to ennoble a chain, and turn its very 
clanking into an eloquence that should speak for him 
of the "hope of Israel." Others might be ashamed 
of his chain, he was not. From it he took the title, 
"Bond servant of Jesus Christ," a title nobler far 
than any mere fragment of alphabetism that is made 
to adorn or desecrate the names of men. Under this 
title he proceeded to Rome, and this was the title he 
wore while he was the imprisoned primate of the 
church in Rome. It has fallen to the lot of his 
degenerate non-apostolic successors of later ages to 
deck themselves in various combinations of ecclesi- 
astical capital letters, always with corresponding 
millinery, and strut about the "Holy City." He, as 
lief as not, would enter the city of the Caesars, make 
the acquaintance of Caesar's household, and appear 
before the reigning Caesar, bound like a culprit to a 
soldier of the Caesars. 

Perhaps he saw in this the only possible way of 
appearing before the highest potentate on earth, for 
how else than as a prisoner demanding his legal 
rights as a Roman could a despised Jew get himself 
before the Emperor of the world! How else could 
he gain the opportunity of turning for one brief hour 
the court of the Empire into a pulpit, and the throne 
of the Caesars into a pew while he preached Christ 
crucified! Did Paul ever appear before Nero in 
person, and did he reason of righteousness, temper- 
ance, and the judgment to come, as in the presence 
of Felix? And was there in that degenerate Caesar, 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



243 



that malformed specimen of human kind, still left 
enough of humanity to tremble, as Felix did? 
Luke's history ends suddenly, and there is much that 
we shall never know, but the possibility of such a 
meeting between the noblest and the ignoblest of 
men, the former in chains, the latter on a throne, is a 
spur to the imagination. 

By his appeal to Caesar, and his consequent trial in 
Rome, Paul gained, or at least planned, a test case in 
the supreme court of his day. He must have fore- 
seen that general persecutions would arise, instigated 
by Jews and pagans alike, if the sanctions of the 
Empire were not obtained for the growing faith. 
He could reason thus: I appeal to Csesar; should I 
be acquitted, Christianity will then stand as a religio 
Ucita, and Christians throughout the Empire can 
then claim the protection of Rome. This supposi- 
tion ennobles his appeal from a mere matter of per- 
sonal self-defense to a far-seeing and definitely 
planned defense of all Christians. 

It should be noted that the last eight chapters of 
the book of Acts are devoted almost exclusively to 
Paul's connection with Roman officials. A tribune 
with his cohort of soldiers saved him from the mob, 
and led him to the tower of Antonia, from the steps 
of which he was permitted to make his defense to his 
own people in Hebrew. When certain Jews swore 
by their lives that they would kill him, Claudius 
Lysias sent him under guard to Felix. Felix pro- 
tected him, heard him, and trembled, and turned 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



him over after two years to Festus. Festus also 
protected him, declined to take him to Jerusalem for 
trial, granted his appeal to Caesar, and permitted him 
to speak before Agrippa. Julius the centurion, his 
guardian on the well-nigh disastrous voyage to Eome, 
"entreated him courteously," permitted him to visit 
his friends in Sidon, and took him into his counsels 
during the voyage. On the island of Melita, Publius 
and others "honored him with many honors." At 
Puteoli his Roman guard permitted him to tarry 
seven days with Christian brethren. At Rome he 
was suffered "to dwell by himself, with a soldier that 
kept him." 

It is an attractive theory of Prof. Ramsay's, that 
Luke wrote his books, the Gospel and the Acts, the 
former a little before, and the latter a little later 
than, the year 80; that at that time there was a grow- 
ing tendency in the Empire to persecute Christians 
because they were Christians; that, therefore, Luke 
had a well denned purpose in dwelling so at length 
upon the relations of Paul to the Empire, namely, to 
show that in his day Christians could not be con- 
demned on the charge of being Christians, but only, 
like other citizens, upon criminal charges; that it was 
his intention to write a third book in which to set 
forth Paul's trial and release, and later ministry; 
that the completion of his plan would have been the 
completion of his plea for Christianity as a religio 
licita, and that the work in full was to be addressed, 
as the Gospel and the Acts certainly are, to a Roman 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



245 



officer, whose baptismal name was Theophilus. In 
these sentences but the barest outline of the theory is 
given, and the reader must be referred to Prof. Ram- 
say's work for its complete statement and argu- 
mentation. Like most theories, it explains some 
things, raises some questions that it does not settle, 
and leaves some of the old problems without solu- 
tion. If the late date assigned be accepted, one im- 
mediately wonders why then there should be neither 
in the Gospel nor in the Acts any reference to the 
destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70; why nothing 
is said about the Neronian persecutions, and why 
there should be no hint of the heretical tendencies 
that were troubling the church late in the century. 
The supposition of an intended third book, which 
Luke was not permitted to finish, weighs in a meas- 
ure against these objections, and also explains the 
abrupt ending of the Acts. In the main, the theory 
seems credible, and it is at least worthy of careful 
consideration. 

Luke's description of the voyage from Csesarea to 
Some must be that of one who made the trip. It is 
not fiction. The course of the voyage has been 
retraced point by point; harbors, such as Fair 
Havens and St. Paul's Bay, have been visited and 
identified, and even the soundings recorded by Luke 
have been verified, and no pains have been spared to 
test the accuracy of the record. The vividness and 
precision of the account are such, the exactness of 
the soundings and of the specified days and nights 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



and hours is such, that Luke is supposed to have 
kept while on board a diary, with the help of which 
at a later date he framed the history. Prof. Ramsay 
says, "The account of the voyage as a whole is com- 
monly accepted by critics as the most trustworthy 
part of the Acts, and as one of the most instructive 
documents for the knowledge of ancient seaman- 
ship." We should be aware that the hyper-higher- 
critics have tried their hands upon this chapter. 
They have discovered in the "sections" vv. 21-26 
and vv. 33-35 a better role and a higher character at- 
tributed to Paul than in vv. 10 and 31, and they have 
forthwith concluded that these "sections" are the 
interpolations of a later writer, who sought to throw 
around Paul the halo of a mythical heroism. It is 
interesting therefore to know the opinion of the 
latest great specialist in this field. Prof. Ramsay 
says : 

" But let us cut out every verse that puts Paul on a 
higher plane, and observe the narrative that would 
result: Paul twice conies forward with advice that is 
cautiously prudent,- and shows a keen regard to the 
chances of -safety. If that is all the character he 
displayed throughout the voyage, why do we study 
the man and his fate? All experience shows that in 
such a situation there is often found some one to 
encourage the rest; and if Paul had not been the 
man to comfort and cheer his despairing shipmates, 
he would never have impressed himself on history or 
made himself an interest to all succeeding times, 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



247 



The world's history stamps the interpolation theory 
here as false. ... It would cut out the center of 
the picture. . . . The superhuman element is 
inextricably involved in this book; you cannot cut it 
out by any critical process that will bear scrutiny. 
You must take all or leave all." 

Rome when Paul visited it was a city of two mil- 
lions of people, the cullings, good, bad, and indiffer- 
ent, from every nation under heaven. Conqueror and 
conquered, master and slave, soldier and citizen, 
Greeks, Jews, all sorts of barbarians, kinky-haired 
Africans, blue-eyed Germans, matrons as noble and 
chaste as the mother of the Gracchi, matrons who 
counted their age by the number of husbands they 
had had, multitudes of priests and prostitutes, armies 
of gladiators and droves of wild beasts, the immensely 
rich and the desperately poor, were mingled together 
in that awful pell-mell of humanity, which had as its 
hope against starvation the corn ships from Alexan- 
dria; as its chief est amusements, the midnight brawl 
and the blood-soaked sands of the amphitheater; and 
as its chief citizen Nero, at once emperor, "priest, 
atheist, and god." Paul's imprisonment in Rome 
fell within that period characterized by Gibbon as 
the iron age, the period that succeeded the peaceful 
years of Augustus, and that preceded ''the golden 
age of Trajan and the Antinonies." There falls 
within the purview of New Testament history a group 
of the successors of Augustus which Gibbon has 
bunched and branded in the following summary 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



way. "Their unparalleled vices, and the splendid 
theater on which they were acted, have saved them 
from oblivion. The dark, unrelenting Tiberias, the 
furious Caligula, the feeble Claudius, the profligate 
and cruel Nero, the beastly Vitellius, and the timid, 
inhuman Doniitian, are condemned to everlasting 
infamy. During four-score years (excepting only the 
short and doubtful respite of Vespasian's reign) 
Home groaned beneath an unremitting tyranny, 
which exterminated the ancient families of the 
republic, and was fatal to almost every virtue and 
every talent that arose in that unhappy period." 

It was Nero's Rome in which Paul was imprisoned. 
Tha Eome of which Nero himself grew tired, and 
which he burned in the fury of his passion to invent 
a new sensation. Three of its fourteen precincts 
were utterly destroyed; four only escaped the flames, 
and in these were the Imperial palaces and gardens. 
To these gardens the terrified populace thronged, 
and the monstrous Emperor, to excuse himself, 
charged the incendiarism on the Christians, and still 
fertile in the diabolical invention of sensations and 
spectacles, crucified some; sewed some in the skins 
of wild animals and thrust them out to the dogs; 
and others still he steeped in pitch, and thrust them 
out in blazing tunics to light up the gardens while 
he played the role of a buffoon and charioteer. This 
was the beginning of the persecution of Christians as 
Christians by the Empire, and it happened in the year 
64, only four years after Paul entered the city as the 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



249 



" bond servant of Jesus Christ. ' Gibbon has sketch- 
ed for us one of the transformation scenes of his- 
tory which in itself is suggestive of many reflections. 
" The gardens and the circus of Nero on the Vatican, 
which were polluted with the blood of the first Chris- 
tians, have been rendered still more famous by the 
triumph and by the abuse of the persecuted religion. 
On the same spot a temple which far surpasses the 
ancient glories of the Capitol has since been erected 
by the Christian Pontiffs, who, deriving their claim 
of universal dominion from an humble fisherman of 
Galilee, have succeeded to the throne of the Caesars, 
given laws to the barbarian conquerors of Rome, and 
extended their spiritual jurisdiction from the coasts 
of the Baltic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean." 
So similarly history has its revenges in persons as 
well as places. While Nero was at the same moment 
claiming divine honors and outraging all human 
decency, Paul was preaching to the chance visitors at 
his home the doctrines which were destined in a few 
generations to do away forever with the impious hon- 
ors that paganism was accustomed to pay to its 
potentates. And in his writings, produced in part 
during that imprisonment, he has left enshrined the 
same doctrines, more enduring than the ancient Capi- 
tol or the modern Temple, and destined to destroy 
the superstitious reverence paid by devotees scarcely 
less than pagan to a spiritual potentate more Roman- 
ized than Christianized. To that obscure prisoner 
more than to any other except the Savior himself was 



250 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



due the reformation of the Empire in conduct and 
doctrines, and to him we owe in like manner the very 
soul and body of the sixteenth century Reformation, 
and of present century world-wide evangelization. 
He who, glorying only in the cross of Christ, was so 
potent to smite the idols of his own day, is still 
potent, through the kindred souls of Martin Luther 
and William Carey, to smite the more modern idols 
of the papacy and of paganism. 

Before Paul reached Rome, forty miles out at Appii 
Forum, and again thirty miles out at Tabernae, he 
was met by "brethren" from the city, "whom, 
when Paul saw, he thanked God and took courage." 
There was already a church in Rome, and at least 
two years before Paul had addressed to these same 
brethren his Roman letter. There must have been 
some who knew him by face. Had Priscilla and 
Aquila gone back to Asia before Paul reached Rome? 
Timothy was with him much, and is associated with 
him in the addresses of the Colossian and Philippian 
letters, and in that to Philemon. Mark, touchingly 
mentioned as "sister's son to Barnabas" (Col. iv. 
10), was with him, and Aristarchus stayed so con- 
stantly with him as to deserve the appellation, " fel- 
low-prisoner." And he had Luke, his " beloved 
physician," and Epaphras, a " dear fellow-servant," 
and minister to the church at Colossae, perhaps a 
young man, and like Timothy and Titus, a student of 
Paul, — for did he not have a college in Rome, and a 
training school for young preachers of the Word? 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



251 



And another possible student, Demas, who afterward 
forsook him, " having loved this present world," 
was with him. And lastly, Tychicus, " a beloved 
brother and faithful minister of the Lord," by whom 
the letters to the Colossians and Ephesians were 
posted, was one of his companions. Ah, that hired 
house in Eome! Was it not at once the home of 
the apostle, his hostlery for friends, his pulpit, his 
professor's chair, and his editorial sanctum, — and his 
prison? Could we identify that house, could we 
know that spot, it should rank with Sinai in the sanc- 
tity, and higher than Sinai in the potency of the 
voice that has spoken from it ! 

It seems that the Jews in Rome had little to do 
with Paul. We have no assurance that they took 
part in the proceedings against him. Perhaps they 
considered prudence the better part of valor. They 
were a despised people in Rome, and they knew it; 
Paul was a favored prisoner, and they knew that. 
When he called them to him three days after his 
arrival, and laid his case before them, they professed 
to know nothing about it. They even professed a 
desire to hear him, for they said with a touch of 
malice, " As concerning this sect, we know that it is 
everywhere spoken against." Upon a set day they 
heard him from morning till evening expounding and 
testifying, and persuading them, "both out of the 
law of Moses and out of the prophets." As usual, 
some believed and some did not, and as usual they 
fell into a violent dispute among themselves. That 



252 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



Paul was in no mood to curry favor with them, but 
only to enlighten and persuade and warn them, is 
shown by his use of Isaiah's terrible anathema, de- 
nouncing their hardness and their hopelessness, and 
by his definitely expressed purpose of devoting him- 
self to the Gentiles (xxviii. 26-28). 

It seems also that the Church in Rome was not en- 
thusiastic in its loyalty to Paul. In the last chapter of 
the letter to the Colossians he names a very few disci- 
ples, and says, " These only are my fellow-workers 
unto the kingdom of God, which have been a comfort 
to me." In his second letter to Timothy, he com- 
plains bitterly, and with prayers for his deserters, 
that at his first defense no man stood with him. 
Judaizers may have influenced some, but more than 
likely the dread of Nero's fickleness and cruelty 
rested like a blight upon the souls of all but Paul 
and the very fewest of his friends. 

There are some indications that at this period 
Paul was not penniless. He did not work at his 
trade, and he seems not to have depended on alms. 
He had his own hired house, thus escaping the loath- 
some prisons of that day. This house could not 
have been in the poorer quarters of the city, for it 
must have been easy of access to the soldiers, to 
one of whom he was chained daily while he 
was in Caisarea. Felix communed with him 
often, courting a bribe from him, which evident- 
ly he never received. But the fact indicates that 
Paul had money at his disposal (ch. xxiv. 26). 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



253 



In making his appeal to Csesar, according to Prof. 
Ramsay, he was entering upon an expensive 
line of life. We are reminded by the same author 
that a long lawsuit is expensive; that Roman offi- 
cials, such as Felix, did not look for small bribes; 
that " at Csesarea he was confined to the palace of 
Herod; but he had to live, to maintain two attend- 
ants, and to keep up a respectable appearance;" 
that he was attended, perhaps at his own expense, 
by Luke and Aristarchus, who to the Romans would 
appear as his slaves; and that at Rome, in addition 
to the expense of "his own hired house," he would 
be expected to maintain the soldier who guarded 
him. Prof. Ramsay's solution of this financial phase 
of the question is pleasing, and it casts a side light 
on his theory as previously referred to. Concluding 
that Paul must have been a man of some wealth dur- 
ing these years, he suggests that either he had come 
into possession of his hereditary property, or if he 
had previously been disowned by his relatives, a 
reconciliation had been reached, and his property 
was put at his disposal. If so, he was using it in 
defense of the faith, making his own case a test case 
in the highest of earthly courts. This would be in 
perfect keeping with the character of the man who 
could say, " But what things were gain to me, those 
I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless, and 
I count all things but loss for the excellency of the 
knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I 



254 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



have suffered all things, and do count them but dross 
that I may win Christ." 

One question remains, that of Paul's acquittal and 
subsequent labors. Over this Luke has left the veil 
of his silence. Paul's later epistles are not decisive. 
It would be worse than idle to presume upon a cate- 
gorical decision here, when such names as those of 
Neander and Schaif are not in agreement. No doubt 
there will always be two sides to the question. How- 
ever, the higher probability seems to be in favor of 
acquittal; of subsequent work in Greece, in Asia 
Minor, and in Crete; of (possibly) a brief visit to 
Spain; of a second imprisonment, and of martyr- 
dom in Kome in the last year of Nero's reign. 

It has been assumed that Paul was chosen to take 
the place of Judas, the selection of Matthias not 
having been directed by the Holy Spirit; or of James, 
the brother of John, who was slain by Herod. But 
there is a deeper significance than that in Paul's 
presence among the apostles. Israel itself should 
have been God's missionary people to other peoples. 
But they 46 rejected the counsel of God against them- 
selves." They would not be convinced even by the 
resurrection of Jesus. They persecuted the church. 
They murdered Stephen, and they murdered James. 
They were proud of their particularism, and they 
determined to maintain it. They were formalists, 
legalists, traditionalists, nationalists. They would 
murder, but they would not accept and teach a loft- 
ier faith and larger hope than such as centered in 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



255 



themselves. Even the Jerusalem church, though not 
overruled by the Judaizing party, was crippled by it. 
From that nation, therefore, and even from that 
church, there was no hope of a world-wide work. 
Paul was chosen to do a nation 's work, and he did it 
as completely as ever one mortal, divinely directed, 
could take the place of myriads. And moreover, he 
did it in spite of those myriads. 

The number of the Apostle Paul's students and 
admirers must increase with increasing ages. Among 
great students, whether professors of his faith or 
not, there is all but unanimity in eulogy. Farrar 
ranks him as the greatest man of all times, Christ 
being, of course, excepted from the comparison as 
being more than man. Sabatier says of him: 64 The 
lofty character of Paul has not always been properly 
apprehended because it has too often been considered 
from a narrow point of view. Its striking originality 
seems to be due to the fruitful combination in it of 
two spiritual forces, two orders of faculty which are 
seldom found united in this day in one personality, 
and which in the case of Jesus alone presented them- 
selves more perfectly blended and carried even to a 
further height than in the apostle. I mean dialectic 
power and religious inspiration, the rational and the 
mystic element. Or to borrow Paul's own language, 
the activity of the mind (wws) and of the spirit 

(7rve£px)." 

Godet says: 6 'The calling of Paul was nothing 
less than the counterpart of Abraham's. The life 



256 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



of Paul is summed up in a word ; a unique man for 
a unique task." " Christianity, had thy one work 
been to produce a St. Paul, that alone would have 
rendered thee dear to the coldest reason." 



XIII. 

THE FIRST HISTORY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 
IN THE CHURCH 



"Christ is the second Adam, who, having recapitulated the long- 
development of humanity into himself, taken it up into himself, that 
is, and healed its wounds and fructified its barrenness, gives it a 
fresh start by a new birth from him. The Spirit coming forth at 
Pentecost out of his uplifted manhood, as from a glorious fountain 
of new life, perpetuates all its richness, its power, its fullness in the 
organized society of humanity which be prepared and built for the 
Spirit's habitation. The church, his Spirit-bearing body, comes 
zforth into the world, not as the exclusive sphere of the Spirit's 
operations, for 'that breath bloweth where it listeth,' but as the 
special and covenanted sphere of his regular and uniform operation, 
the place where he is pledged to dwell and to work; the center 
marked out and hedged in, whence ever and again proceeds forth 
anew the work of human recovery ; the home where, in spite of sin 
and imperfection, is ever kept the picture of what the Christian life 
is, of what common human life is meant to be and can become." — 
Lux Mundi. 

258 



XIII. 



THE FIRST HISTORY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE 

CHURCH. 

"And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak 
with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance."— Acts ii. 4. 

Luke is a historian. He has his method. He 
records facts. He does not syllogize, he does not 
legislate, he does not speculate. Prayer-meetings 
and prisons and earthquakes and miracles of release 
stand recorded side by side. Men and angels and 
sorcerers play their proper roles as belonging alike 
to the drama. In the same paragraph appear an 
ordinary journey and a miraculous conversion. In 
marvelous ways fishermen and publicans confront 
high priests and their councils; Jews mingle with 
Gentiles; cursing murderers are contrasted with 
praying martyrs; missionaries in chains cause Roman 
rulers to tremble, and spiritual direction marks a 
pathway transverse to that of carnal tradition. 
Here miracles are mingled with commonplace mat- 
ters just as though they were at home there. They 
are written down without exclamation points. Mys- 
tery becomes history, and there is no interrogation. 
In the first church the supernatural found such a 
congenial home with the natural that the first his- 
torian of it never dreamed of questioning its rightful 

259 



260 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



residence there. He simply tells about it as Caesar 
tells about Gaul. Among the lofty persons that 
move upon the stage of this history the Holy Spirit 
has his place, and there is such a relationship be- 
tween his presence and the course recorded that 
without the former the latter is inexplicable. Luke 
does not theorize, but when he sets before us a super- 
natural course of history, he sets before us at the 
same time the supernatural person that reason de- 
mands as its coefficient. His method is as admirable 
as his material is wonderful. 

In the book of Acts three persons above all others 
bear witness to a fourth. These three are the mis- 
sionaries Peter and Paul, and their guide, the Holy 
Spirit. Eeverently, these three are one in bearing 
witness to Christ. If the language is startling, it is 
intended. Here, absolutely, is where our study of 
the Holy Spirit in the church of Christ must begin. 

And no study is more needful, for the Holy Spirit 
has been a great sufferer in the house of his friends. 
There is no emulation, wrath, strife, or sedition 
among Christians for which the Holy Spirit has not 
been made to suffer responsibility. There is no 
schismatic or heretic but claims his guidance. The 
meanest ignoramus cloaks his most trifling and 
despicable whims under the Holy Spirit, and calls 
them revelations. Evangelistic follies and frenzies 
parade their shoutings, their shame and their dis- 
order as the power of the Spirit. We have listened 
to the profane man on the street, and we have called 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



261 



him a blasphemer, but we have not gone into our 
temples to condemn the blasphemy that is there, 
where men put the Holy Spirit himself up as a 
defense of their bigotry, cruelty, and hatred, and 
make him the inspirer of their creeds, their thumb- 
screws, their mystic ravings, and even their immoral- 
ities. Whittier's terrible arraignment, in his "Brew- 
ing of the Soma," has a historic justification too 
ample by far: 

" As in that child-world's early year, 
Each after age has striven 
By music, incense, vigils drear, 
And trance to bring the skies more near, 
Or lift men up to heaven ! — 

" Some fever of the blood and brain, 
Some self-exalting spell, 
The scourger's keen delight of pain, 
The Dervish dance, the Orphic strain, 
The wild-haired Bacchant's yell, — 

"And yet the past comes round again, 
And new doth old fulfill ; 
In sensuous transports wild as vain 
We brew in many a Christian fane 
The heathen Soma still ! " 

Beginning with the history of Luke, we are re- 
minded of the promises of Jesus. The fourteenth, 
fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of the Gospel 
according to John are cardinal to the study of the 
Holy Spirit. In these chapters he is most frequently 
called the Comforter, though the original may also be 
translated Helper, or Advocate, understanding that 
the friendship meaning of that word be kept in it, 



262 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



and the forensic meaning be kept out of it. Once 
the Savior calls him the Spirit of truth. In these 
chapters the promised relationship of the Holy Spirit 
to the apostles is expressed under four general heads. 

1. "He shall teach you all things, and bring all 
things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said 
unto you" (John xiv. 26). 

2. "He shall testify of me" (John xv. 26). 

3. "He shall glorify me" (John xvi. 14). 

4. "He will guide you into all truth" (John 
xvi. 13). 

The fourth of these is practically inclusive of the 
first, and the second of the third, for teaching and 
remembrance are the instruments of guidance, and to 
testify of Jesus, simply to present him as he is, is the 
highest glorification of him. This reduces them to 
two: 

"He shall testify of me." 

"He shall guide you into all truth." 

There is a negative promise which serves to empha- 
size both of these: "He shall not speak of him- 
self" (John xvi. 13). These explicit promises, two 
positive and one negative, were made on the night 
before the betrayal, and they have every possible 
prominence that can be given to them by the solem- 
nities of time and place. 

This study would by no means be complete did it 
not include a reference to the promise contained in 
John xvi. 8: "When he is come he will convince 
the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment." 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



263 



This promise has been left till the last because the 
convincing power of the Holy Spirit depended upon 
his guidance of the witnesses, and their consequent 
testimony regarding Jesus. It is with clear intuition 
of this that Godet says, "The discourse of St. Peter 
at Pentecost and its results are the best commentary 
on this text." These promises, therefore, divinely 
prescribe the office and work of the Holy Spirit. 
Luke's history shows their fulfillment. 

On the day of Pentecost the apostles were guided 
by the Holy Spirit in their speech, for it is said that 
they spoke "as the Spirit gave them utterance " 
(Acts ii. 4). The Apostle Peter's sermon was there- 
fore Spirit-guided, and forever as we read it we feel 
that it is replete with testimony concerning Christ. 
The apostle's answer to inquiring sinners is likewise 
Spirit-guided, and his command to them to repent 
and be baptized in the name of Jesus glorifies Christ 
by making the very imagery of his death and resur- 
rection the very symbol of conversion and salvation. 

The apostles showed their painful need of guid- 
ance by the last question they proposed to Jesus 
before his ascension. "Wilt thou at this time 
restore again the kingdom to Israel?" O carnal- 
minded men! Your mission is not to restore the 
kingdom to Israel, but to testify of Jesus! You 
have nothing to do to fight Rome, but to preach 
the Gospel ! With such questions foremost you are 
not fit for the work! Wait! "You shall receive 
power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you, 



264 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusa- 
lem, and in Judsea, and in Samaria, and unto the 
uttermost jDarts of the earth" (Acts i. 6-8). Given 
the Jewish, carnal-minded apostles on the one hand ; 
on the other, the purely spiritual products of Pente- 
cost; then cancel from the record the agency of the 
Holy Spirit, and such a gap remains as the intellect 
refuses to sanction. Such fruit does not grow from 
such trees. Cause and effect are not properly 
matched. Such writing would seem mythical. But 
the miracle that the intellect demands the record pre- 
sents, and the writing immediately assumes the form 
of history. The Holy Spirit, personal, intelligent, 
powerful, is present, and this miracle makes all else 
natural. The apostles forget Israel; they remember 
Christ and preach him; they had trembled on the 
night of his betrayal, but they are heroes now; they 
declare courageously and mightily the resurrection and 
the Lordship of Jesus; their hearers are convicted 
of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; and the 
young church comes forth in the strength and beauty 
of a spiritual faith, a spiritual love, and a spiritual 
hope. The Holy Spirit is logical. Myths and "cun- 
ningly devised fables" do not fabricate causes that 
are adequate to effects like this, and interlock prom- 
ises with their fulfillment like this. 

When Peter gave his answer to Annas the high 
priest (iv. 5-12) he was filled with the Holy Spirit. 
His testimony was wholly for Jesus, and he exalted 
him to an exclusive place, saying, " There is none 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



265 



other name under heaven given among men whereby 
we must be saved." In the praise meeting that fol- 
lowed the acquittal (iv. 31), " they were all filled with 
the Holy Spirit, and they spake the word of God with 
boldness." 

The presence and the presidency of the Holy Spirit 
in the church is assumed by the Apostle Peter when 
he accuses Ananias of lying to the Holy Spirit (v. 3). 

Men chosen to prominence in the church were 
expected to be "full of the Holy Spirit." Stephen 
the martyr was pre-eminently such a man (vi. 3-5). 
They were not able to resist "the wisdom and spirit 
with which he spake." The climax of his accusation 
against his people was that they " always resisted the 
Holy .Spirit; " that therefore they had persecuted 
the prophets, and had slain Jesus, making themselves 
his betrayers and murderers (vii. 51-53). 

Undoubtedly there were visible and audible signs 
of the presence of the Holy Spirit. This was the 
rule and not the exception. The first Christians 
knew when the Holy Spirit fell upon them 
(viii. 14-20). There was something to be seen and 
heard that Simon wanted to buy, and his groveling 
mistake gave his name to the world as a synonym for 
all filthy, lucrative traffic in holy things. 

The mission of Ananias to Saul was not simply to 
baptize him, but also "that he might receive his 
sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit." Pres- 
ently this Spirit-filled man " preached Christ in the 
synagogues, that he is the Son of God," and thus 



266 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



was performed the 44 office work " of the Holy Spirit, 
and the glorification of Jesus (ix. 17-20). 

When the churches in Judaea and Galilee and 
Samaria "walked in the fear of the Lord, and the 
comfort of the Holy Spirit," they were multiplied 
and edified (ix. 31). 

The Holy Spirit fell upon Cornelius and his house- 
hold before their baptism. Thus he guided the 
Apostle Peter and the church into the transforming 
truth that the Gentiles were to be received just as the 
Jews were, simply upon the basis of the presentation 
of Christ and of faith in him. 4 4 What was I that I 
could withstand God?" said Peter afterward in mak- 
ing his defense to his Jewish brethren in Jerusalem 
(x. 44-48, and xi. 15-18. See also essay on 44 The 
First Gentile Convert") . In the first council 
(xv. 6-11) this fact was used by Peter as an unan- 
swerable argument. 

Of Barnabas it is said, 44 He was a good man, and 
full of the Holy Spirit and of faith," indicating that 
the Holy Spirit finds hospitality where goodness and 
faith also dwell. Under the ministry of this man in 
the Gentile Church of Antioch 44 much people was 
added unto the Lord." No doubt this good and 
faithful man was Spirit-led also when he did so wise 
a thing as to seek out Saul and make him an 
associate in his ministry (xi. 22-27). 

In the thirteenth chapter of Acts there is the 
record of a new movement. The camp of the Lord 
with its pillar of fire must now move forward into 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



267 



the darkness of pagan lands. The church must 
become a foreign missionary society. The historian 
is very emphatic in the part he assigns to the Holy 
Spirit in this movement. "The Holy Spirit said, 
Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work where- 
unto I have called them." Here the Holy Spirit, 
fulfilling his "office work" in guiding the church 
and glorifying Jesus, calls the men and commands 
the church to send them out. But, as though this 
were not explicit enough, the matter is restated in the 
fourth verse in language as plain, as language can be. 
"So they being sent forth by the Holy Spirit 
departed unto Seleucia; and from thence they sailed 
to Cyprus." 

From this time the Apostle Paul becomes the 
leading character in the book, and the Holy Spirit is 
his closest companion. Filled with the Spirit, he re- 
buked Elymas, the sorcerer (xiii. 9-11.) Forbidden 
by the Spirit, he refrained from a missionary journey 
through Northern Asia Minor, and soon discovered 
that the Spirit was guiding him, by the help of the 
"Man of Macedonia," into Europe (xvi. 6-10). 
Thus he was led to preach in Philippi, Thessalonica, 
Berea, Athens and Corinth. At Ephesus he found 
disciples of John, to whom he imparted the Holy 
Spirit, after they were baptized in the name of Jesus. 
" And they spake with tongues and prophesied " 
(xix. 1-7). He would not be dissuaded from going 
to Jerusalem, though the Holy Spirit assured him 
that in that city, as in every other, bonds and afflic- 



268 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



tions awaited him (xx. 22, 23). He reminded the 
elders of the church in Ephesus that the Holy Spirit 
had made them overseers of the flock (xx. 28). In 
his last recorded speech, and therefore, so far as this 
record goes, his last meeting and parting with his 
Jewish brethren, he charged them in the name of the 
Holy Spirit, quoting Isaiah, of blindness and deaf- 
ness, and hardness of heart (xxviii. 16-28). Still one 
other noteworthy reference claims its place among 
the above. When the Church in council rendered 
its decision as to the status of the Gentiles it claimed 
to be Spirit-guided, saying, as an introduction to the 
decision, " It seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to 
us ... " (xv. 28). 

Having collated the Scriptures and summarized the 
history pertinent to the theme, it remains to offer 
some reflections and leave the reader to judge wheth- 
er they are legitimate conclusions. 

The Holy Spirit was the guiding genius of the 
church. He made it cosmopolitan, and he made it 
missionary. 

His was the presence, often but not always, of an 
audible, visible, intelligible intelligence. This pres- 
ence, called metaphorically the baptism of the Spirit, 
was not confined to the apostles, nor even to the 
first Gentiles in the home of Cornelius. The promise 
of "the gift of the Holy Spirit" (ii. 38), must 
upon any fair construction refer to this presence. 
To the re-baptized disciples of John in Ephesus 
was granted this presence (xix. 1-6). The study 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



269 



upon this point may be carried forward into the 
epistolary writings, especially the first letter to the 
Corinthians. 

This presence was conditioned upon the preaching 
of the Gospel, and might either precede or succeed, 
but never supersede, baptism. 

The book of Acts gives us no iudication of an in- 
tention on the part of the Holy Spirit to resign his 
office in favor of a written word. If there was such 
an intention, or such a resignation, the record of it 
must be found elsewhere. 

The apostles had no written word by which they 
could be guided in the building of a cosmopolitan, 
missionary church. The New Testament had yet to 
be created, and to be created by them under the 
direction of the Holy Spirit. The Old Testament 
would not do, for its cult is neither cosmopolitan nor 
missionary. The narrow limits of its legalism were 
a constant offset to the aspirations of its prophet- 
ism. But the Holy Spirit supplied the place of a 
book, and how much more one dares not attempt to 
say. Nevertheless, Christians can never cease to 
remember with gratitude that they have from the 
Holy Spirit while he dwelt audibly and visibly in the 
church, the gift of a collection of books, which we 
call the New Testament, and which, as distinguished 
from the Mosaic Bible, is the Christian Bible. 

Revelation was the work of Jesus; inspiration was 
that of the Holy Spirit. " He shall not speak of 
himself. He shall take of mine, and shall show it 



270 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



unto you." The quickening of the memory of the 
apostles, the fitting of their words to the needs of 
the hour, the adjustment of men and measures to 
the accomplishment of ends that were desirable, as 
in the appointment of the seven deacons and the 
sending out of Paul and Barnabas, are indicative of 
the whole tenor of his inspirational work. Jesus 
himself revealed himself to Saul of Tarsus; after 
the revelation the Holy Spirit became Saul's helper. 
This placed him upon the same basis of revelation 
and inspiration that belonged to the other apostles. 

It is evident that the relation of the Holy Spirit to 
us cannot be identical with that t6 the apostles. He 
cannot quicken our memories with the words of 
Jesus as he did theirs, for Jesus has not spoken to us 
as to them. He cannot use us in an evidential way 
as he did them, for we have never seen and heard 
Jesus. It may be for this reason that there are not 
given to us the extraordinary powers of the Spirit, 
such as healing and speaking with tongues. 

The immediate conversion of sinners was not the 
work of the Holy Spirit. That would be mysticism. 
But through men to testify to the man Christ, and 
through men to glorify the man Christ, and through 
men to take of the things of Christ and show them 
to the world, — this was his work. Christ is the reve- 
lation of truth. It is truth that convicts. It is evi- 
dence that substantiates truth. Along this rational 
highway the Holy Spirit guided the apostles and the 
first church in the work of evangelization. 



STUDIES IN ACTS 271 

Does the Holy Spirit abide in the church to-day, 
and does he make his home with Christians individu- 
ally? We do not work miracles; we do not proph- 
esy; we do not speak with tongues. But, — "The 
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, 
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." 
Have we the fruit of the Spirit? This only is our 
capital question. 

" No more from rocky Horeb the smitten waters gush; 
Fallen is Bethel's ladder, quenched is the burning bush. 
The jewels of the Urim and Thummim all are dim; 
The fire has left the altar, the sign the teraphim. 
No more in ark or hill or grove, the Holiest abides ; 
Not in the scroll's dead letter, the eternal secret hides. 
Have ye not still my witness within yourselves alway? 
My hand that on the keys of life for bliss or bale I lay? 
Still in perpetual judgment, I hold assize within,' 
With sure reward of holiness, and dread rebuke of sin. 
My Gerizim and Ebal are in each human soul ; 
The still, small voice of blessing, and Sinai's thunder roll. 
The world will have its idols, and flesh and sense their sign ; 
But the blinded eyes shall open, and the grossest ear be fine. 
What if the vision tarry? God's time is always best ; 
The true light shall be witnessed, the Christ within confessed." 

Even so. " The Christ within!" And no less also 
the Christ without; the historic Christ; the risen, 
the ascended, the now regnant Christ shall be con- 
fessed. And that through the witness of the Holy 
Spirit, also historic, and speaking overmore as Peter 
spoke on Pentecost, as Paul spoke in Antioch, in 
Athens, in Corinth, and in Rome. 



XIV. 

EXCURSUS. THE APOSTLE PAUL AS ORGAN- 
IZER AND UNIFIER 



"Nothing is essential to the conversion of the world but the 
union and co-operation of Christians. Nothing is essential to the 
union of Christians but the apostles' teaching or testimony. 
Neither truth alone nor union alone is sufficient to subdue the unbe- 
lieving nations. But truth and union combined are omnipotent. 
They are omnipotent, for God is in them and with them, and has 
consecrated and blessed them for this very purpose."— J.. Campbell, 
Christian System. 

274 



XIV. 

EXCURSUS. THE APOSTLE PAUL AS ORGANIZER 
AND UNIFIER. 

"Now after many years I came to bring alms to my nation, and 
offerings." — Acts xxiv. 17. 

The Apostle Paul's emergence in history is as an 
organizer and leader of men. At the first mention 
of his name there is a recognition of his primacy in 
persecution. "The witnesses laid down their clothes 
at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul." A 
moment later the historian, speaking still further of 
the martyrdom of Stephen, says, 4 'And Saul was 
consenting to his death." And still a moment later, 
i 6 As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering 
into every house, and haling men and women, com- 
mitted them to prison." There for a time in solitary 
prominence of blood-stained activity, with strangely 
mournful, and even frightful and terrible introduc- 
tion, Luke leaves his hero standing. 

No less than nine chapters, and at least twelve 
passages of the New Testament, bear witness to the 
thoroughness and the terror of his organized persecu- 
tions. Aside from him, no other persistent and sys- 
tematic persecutor is brought before us. It is well to 
note a number of these passages, for they have not 
received the attention they deserve in making up our 

275 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



estimate of Paul's character and influence. The 
word havoc, used in one of the passages quoted 
above, occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, 
and Farrar tells us that in the Septuagint and in 
classic Greek it is applied to the wild boars that 
uproot a vineyard. In close connection with this 
word, so graphic of destruction, it is said that "he 
entered into every house, and haling men and 
women, committed them to prison," indicating an 
organized and systematic, as well as a relentless, per- 
secution. In the first verses of the ninth chapter of 
Acts, there is the record of his " threatenings and 
slaughter," which he is described as "breathing 
out," and also of his plan for an authorized and 
organized campaign of persecution among all the 
synagogues of Damascus. In both these passages it 
is especially noted by Luke that he did not spare 
women even. His fame as a persecutor had pre- 
ceded him to Damascus, for Ananias says, "I have 
heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath 
done to thy saints at Jerusalem; and here he hath 
authority from the chief priests to bind all that call 
on thy name." 

The apostle himself, both in his speeches and his 
letters, has told us of his persecutions with such 
brevity and emphasis as are indicative of painful 
recollections, but also in such terms as to show sys- 
tem and thoroughness. In Acts xxii. 4 he says: "I 
persecuted this way unto the death, binding and 
delivering into prisons both men and women." In 



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277 



chapter xxvi. 10, 11 he sa} T s: "Many of the saints 
did I shut up in prison, having received authority 
from the chief priests; and when they were put to 
death, I gave my voice against them. And I pun- 
ished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled 
them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad 
against them, I persecuted them even unto strange 
cities." In I. Cor. xv. 9 he calls himself the least of 
the apostles, because he "persecuted the church of 
God." In Gal. i. 13 he says that "beyond measure 
he persecuted the church of God and wasted it." 
And in I. Tim. i. 13 he refers to his former life in 
language of almost unrestrained self-condemnation 
as having been "a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and 
an insulter in word and deed." 

There is every indication that this man's work of 
persecution was not spasmodic and haphazard, but 
that it was a well concerted and definitely directed 
plan for the extermination of Christianity, and there 
appears in it all the genius of leadership, of action, 
of organization, and of direction. It is interesting to 
speculate upon the probable history of the young 
church had this man not been converted. It seems 
not too much to say that the weight of this one man's 
influence, as thrown into the scale for or against 
Christ, meant all but all of life or death to the cause 
of Christ. 

It is impossible to say how much Paul had to do 
with the organization and inception of the first for- 
eign missionary enterprise of the Antioch church. 



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The Holy Spirit is represented as taking the initia- 
tive, and saying, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul 
for the work whereunto I have appointed them." 
Instruction and inspiration are closely correlated in 
the Gospel, and it is not improbable that the teach- 
ing of Barnabas and Saul had prepared the church 
for the movement authorized by the Holy Spirit. 
However, it is a fact that Paul was a leader in the 
work from the first, and that before the evangeliza- 
tion of the island of Cyprus was completed, he 
became the leader in it. The moment in which his 
name was changed from Saul to Paul fixes the date 
of his recognized leadership in the evangelistic move- 
ments of the church (xiii. 9). 

There is a definite statement to the effect that the 
second missionary journey was proposed by Paul 
(xv. 36). After his disagreement with Barnabas, he 
chose Silas, "and departed, being recommended by 
the brethren to the grace of God. And he went 
through Syria and Cilicia confirming the churches." 
The choice of Silas is significant, and has a bearing 
on the Jewish-Gentile controversy, as we shall see 
below. 

The third missionary journey had its beginning as 
described in Acts xviii. 23. Paul departed from 
Antioch, "and went through all the country of 
Galatia and Phrygia in order, strengthening all the 
disciples." During this journey he did his great 
work at Ephesus, passed through Macedonia and 



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279 



Greece, and returned through Macedonia to Troas on 
his way to Jerusalem. 

These journeys are so briefly narrated that upon 
casual reading we by no means get the full impress of 
their significance. We should picture to ourselves 
an evangelistic movement extending from Jerusalem 
and Antioch in Syria through Cilicia, Lycaonia, 
Pisidia, Galatia, Caria, Lydia, Mysia, Macedonia, 
Achaia, and Italy, and the islands of Cyprus and 
Crete; as the chief figure in the personnel of this 
movement, Paul, supporting himself a part of the 
time at least by daily labor, yet preaching and lec- 
turing constantly in schools or synagogues or his own 
private house; selecting and training young men, 
such as Timothy and Titus and Epaphras and Onesi- 
mus and Aristarchus and Tychicus and Trophimus, 
and sending them out as messengers and evangelists 
and overseers, thus taking upon himself "the care of 
all the churches;" through amanuenses and messen- 
gers posting to the churches of his creation imper- 
ishable letters; suffering constant and many times 
perilous persecution; now stoned, now imprisoned, 
now and again fronting furious mobs, and now and 
again shipwrecked; organizing churches; ordaining 
elders; restraining lawlessness; proclaiming liberty; 
meanwhile not forgetting "the poor saints that were 
in Jerusalem," but intent upon carrying out in their 
behalf a general and thoroughly systematized series 
of collections among the churches of Galatia, Mace- 
donia, and Achaia; all the while also defending the 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



Gospel from the attacks of Judaizers on the one 
hand, and on the other from the most imminent dan- 
ger of internal discord — all this and more must go to 
make up an adequate summary of that majestic 
movement, which had Christ for its inspiration, and 
the Apostle Paul for the first of its human agencies. 
To many a church other than that in Corinth he 
might have written, saying, ''Though you have ten 
thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many 
fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you 
through the Gospel. Wherefore I beseech you, be 
ye followers of me." 

In the organization of churches the Apostle Paul 
seems to have been guided by three principles. 
There was first, the historic or conservative prin- 
ciple, viz., his regard for the constitution of the 
Jewish synagogues which were to be found in every 
considerable city. Upon the synagogue plan the 
Mother Church in Jerusalem was modeled, and the 
Gentile churches held continuity with it by being 
similarly organized. This was a point not to be 
despised as regarded the question of unity. The 
official functions of the elders (otherwise presbyters 
or bishops), and of the deacons or minister's, were 
derived from the synagogue, the elders of the one 
corresponding to the elders of the other, and the 
deacons of the one to the almoners of the other. In 
the synagogue there was also a "legate of the con- 
gregation," or "leader of divine worship," whose 
reproduction we seem to have in "the angel of 



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281 



the church," the officer addressed in the letters to 
the churches in the book of Kevelation. Upon their 
first missionary journey the apostles Paul and Barna- 
bas took care that elders were appointed in every 
church (Acts xiv. 23). Paul, having left Titus in 
Crete, instructed him to appoint elders in every city 
(Titus i. 5). In these passages nothing is said about 
deacons, a significant silence, surely. Perhaps that 
office was not considered immediately essential to the 
young churches. However, Paul, in writing to the 
Philippian church, addresses the "bishops (elders) 
and deacons;" he also instructs Timothy as to the 
character of the men who should be appointed to 
this office (I. Tim. iii. 12). 

It is a matter of great moment that the synagogue, 
rather than the temple, became the model of the first 
churches. The latter, with its sacrificial service and 
sacerdotal orders, drops entirely out of the problem, 
and as a factor in the organized work of Christianity 
seems to have been as entirely discarded as though it 
had never existed. There is never in the record of 
any Christian church of apostolic origin the slightest 
intimation of anything like the old altar forms of 
worship, and the priestly class of the Mosaic cult is 
left absolutely behind in the transition from the one 
dispensation to the other. No apostolic Christian 
ever posed as a priest except in the sense that they 
all, from the least to the greatest of them, were both 
"kings and priests unto God." All priestly func- 
tions, aside from these most general ones that per- 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



tain to the whole body of believers, were forever 
gathered up into his person who died for us, and 
who by reason of his resurrection is " Priest forever 
after the order of Melchisedec," that is, after an 
order wholly independent and unique. The claim of 
any professed Christian that he is more priest than 
another, is an ignorant or an impudent usurpation 
of Christ's office, and likewise an ignorant or an im- 
pudent blasphemy against his blood-bought mediator- 
ship. There were no altar forms of worship, there- 
fore, nor was there any priestly class in the churches 
organized by Paul. In the Pauline dispensation the 
brother who " is apt to teach," or to dispense alms, 
has forever taken the place of the skillful slayer of 
beasts, the sprinkler of water and blood and ashes. 

In the second place, Paul was governed by the prin- 
ciple of liberty under the direction of the Holy 
Spirit. The Pauline churches were far from being- 
limited in their organization to the synagogue model. 
The new wine of the Spirit could not be imprisoned 
in the old bottles. Two lists of functions within the 
church, whether official or charismatic, are given by 
Paul, one in I. Cor. xii. 28, and the other in Eph. 
iv. 11. These lists are not in entire correspondence, 
and therefore the apostle must not be considered as 
treating the subject from a technical, much less a 
legalistic standpoint. Indeed such treatment would 
seem to be foreign to the genius of Christianity, for 
Avhere the Spirit is there is liberty rather than 
legality. In the first of these lists it is hard to say 



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283 



where the official functions end and the charismatic 
ones begin, and perhaps we do not need to attempt a 
rigid distinction. Perhaps we get a better view of 
the official freedom and spiritual genius of Chris- 
tianity by leaving them as the apostle has left them. 

44 God hath set some in the church, first apostles, 
secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that mir- 
acles, then gifts of healings, helps (4. e. 9 functions of 
the diaconite; Variorum Bible), governments (i. e., 
functions of the presbyterate ; Variorum Bible), 
diversities of tongues'' (I. Cor. xii. 28). 

"And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; 
and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teach- 
ers" (Eph. iv. 11). 

As intimated above, our present interest in these 
lists lies in the fact of their differences. Neither 
includes all the offices or gifts of the other, and we 
are led to this conclusion, viz., that there were some 
offices and gifts in the Corinthian church that were 
unknown to the Ephesian church, and vice versa; 
or this, viz., that the Apostle Paul did not care to be 
technically exact in his enumeration. In either case 
there is an indication of liberty rather than of legal- 
ism, and in the former of diversity in unity. 

Sabatier, in his work entitled, 44 The Apostle 
Paul," has the following suggestive paragraph bear- 
ing upon this point. 4 4 All development implies 
variety; and hence the apostle perceives and 
acknowledges in the church diverse offices, gifts, 
and ministries (I. Cor. xii. 4). To each of these 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



separate gifts he allows free and full development; 
and through them the wealth of life in the church is 
manifested. But on the other hand these different 
charisms proceed from one and the same spirit 
(I. Cor. xii. 11). And with love as their common 
inspiration, all tend to the same goal, the perfecting 
of the whole body of the church. So the unity of 
the church is, in the first instance, broken up and 
expanded into a rich variety; but this in turn is 
absorbed into the supreme unity. Such is the or- 
ganic and harmonious development of the life of 
the church." 

In the third place, Paul was governed by the prin- 
ciple of expediency in many matters pertaining to 
organization. No doubt it was expedient that Titus 
should be left in Crete to set in order the things that 
were wanting (Titus i. 5); to ordain elders in every 
city; and to exhort and rebuke with all authority 
(ii. 15). This seems to indicate an office distinct 
from any yet named, and so far as Paul's writings go 
it is left without a name. Was Titus the overseer of 
all Crete, and was he then a bishop over the congre- 
gational bishops, and is there here a precedent for 
the episcopal form of church polity? The position 
of Timothy in Ephesus is similar to that of Titus in 
Crete. When Paul went into Macedonia he found it 
expedient that Timothy should abide in Ephesus 
(I. Tim. i. 3); that he should have general super- 
vision of doctrine; of the appointing of elders and 
deacons (I. Tim. iii.), and of the salaries of eld- 



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285 



ers (I. Tim. v. 17), granting double pay or support 
(honor is the euphemism used by Paul) to those who 
should rule well; and with authority also to rebuke 
and exhort under certain limitations. Intense in- 
terest attaches to the position and functions of these 
two men. But whatever conclusions we may come to 
regarding them there is no record of similar officials 
having been sent into other regions or cities, such as 
Macedonia or Achaia, or Philippi or Corinth. It is 
argued, therefore, that in the Apostle Paul's judg- 
ment it must have been simply a matter of expedi- 
ency that these men should be stationed permanently, 
the one in Crete, the other in Ephesus, with func- 
tions superior to those of the elders of the congrega- 
tions; and that, on the contrary, in his judgment the 
exigencies in other churches or districts did not call 
for such an expedient in the way of organization and 
government. 

Another example of the rule of expediency in 
church organization is found in the office of the 
Patronus or JPatrona, not many notices of which are 
given us in the New Testament. There is one clear 
case, however, if the interpretation of Kurtz may be 
relied on. In Rom. xvi. 1 and 2 we have the follow- 
ing language: "I commend unto you Phebe our 
sister, who is a servant of the church which is at 
Cenchrea; that ye receive her in the Lord as becom- 
eth saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever busi- 
ness she hath need of you; for she hath been a 
succourer (Protectress; Variorum Bible) of many, 



286 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



and of myself also." Kurtz in his Church History 
characterizes this as e< a peculiar kind of ministry 
which must soon have developed as something indis- 
pensable to the Christian churches throughout the 
Hellenic and Roman regions, so deeply grounded in 
the social life of classical antiquity was the part 
played by the patron. Freedmen, foreigners, pro- 
letarii could not in themselves hold property, and 
had no claim on the protection of the laws, 
but had to be associated as Glientes with a 
Patronus or Patrona, who in difficult circumstances 
would afford them counsel, protection, support and 
defense. As in the Greek and Roman associations 
for worship this relationship had long before taken 
root, and was one of the things that contributed most 
materially to their prosperity, so also in the Christian 
churches the need for recognizing and giving effect 
to it became all the more urgent in proportion as the 
number of members increased for whom such sup- 
port was necessary. Phebe is warmly commended as 
such a Christian Patrona (Protectress) at Cenchrea, 
the port of Corinth, among whose numerous clients 
the apostle himself is mentioned. Many inscrip- 
tions in the Roman catacombs testify to the deep 
impress which this social scheme made upon the 
organization, especially of the Roman church, down 
to the end of the first century, and to the help it 
gave in rendering that church permanent." 

It would be impossible to find a better example of 
an office created entirely upon the principle of ex- 



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287 



pediency, or one more completely discarded as the 
conditions passed away from which it sprang. 

The Apostle Paul, though thus engaged in his great 
enterprises of evangelization and organization, was at 
the same time equally intent upon preserving the 
unity of the body of Christ. Aside from Christ's 
high-priestly prayer as recorded in the seventeenth 
chapter of John, the New Testament literature upon 
the subject of unity is almost wholly from the pen of 
Paul. His pictured logic of unity is embraced in the 
figure of the church as a body with many members 
and many functions, but moved by the same spirit 
(Rom. xii. 4 and 5; I. Cor. xii. 12); in his figure of 
the church as the body of which Christ is the head 
(Eph. i. 22 and 23; iv. 15 and 16); and in his figure 
of the one body with the one spirit, answering to the 
one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and 
Father of all, who is over all and through all and in 
all (Eph. iv. 4-6). He was quick to chide the church 
in Corinth for its incipient divisions; he exhorted 
the Christians in Rome to be of the same mind one 
toward another; he prays the Philippians to fulfill 
his joy by maintaining like-mindedness, having the 
same love, being of one accord; he instructs both 
Timothy and Titus to avoid foolish and unlearned 
questions because they gender strifes*; he commands 
that those who cause divisions shall be marked and 
avoided, and that the heretic shall be rejected after a 
first and second admonition. These references are 
sufficient to show how constantly the Apostle Paul 



288 STUDIES IN ACTS 

kept the unity of the church before his mind, how 
close it was to his heart, and how jealously he 
guarded it. 

There is still one other principle that enters into 
the Apostle Paul's dealings with churches of such a 
general and comprehensive nature as to deserve sep- 
arate classification and treatment. It is a principle 
inherent in the very substance of the Gospel, and to 
eliminate it would be well-nigh to eliminate the Gos- 
pel as a social force from the affairs of societies and 
nations. It is the democratic or brotherly principle 
of government, and although it is a matter of prime 
importance it must be dismissed here in a single 
paragraph. The Apostle Paul never lorded over the 
congregations ; he did not dogmatize ; he did not dic- 
tate; he was not a pope. He instructs, he advises, 
he entreats, he pleads and prays, bat never permits 
himself to go beyond the affection of a father and 
the persuasion of an elder brother. It was not his to 
claim dominion over faith, but to be a helper in joy 
(II. Cor. i. 24). He ranks himself with Apollos as 
being only a minister (deacon) through whom the 
Corinthian Christians came to their faith (I. Cor. 
iii. 5). As a father he warns the Corinthians, appeal- 
ing to them as his beloved sons, and reminding them 
that though they may have ten thousand instructors 
they cannot have many fathers (I. Cor. iv. 14-17). 
Withdrawal from a brother was enjoined as an action 
on the part of the whole church, the apostle assum- 



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289 



ing only a spiritual presence in the affair (I. Cor. 
v. 1-5). 

Kurtz presents us with an excellent summary of this 
matter in the following sentences : "Confining our- 
selves to the oldest and indisputably authentic epis- 
tles of Paul, we find that the autonomy of the church 
in respect of organization, government, discipline 
and internal administration is made prominent as the 
very basis. of its constitution. He never interferes 
in those matters, enjoining and prescribing by his 
own authority, but always, whether personally or in 
spirit, only as associated with their assemblies, de- 
liberating and deciding in common with them." 

The means that the Apostle Paul adopted as look- 
ing to the permanent unity of the church are of 
transcendent interest in a time like this, when many 
of the choicest spirits in many of our denominations 
are longing for the reunion of Christ's mournfully 
dissevered body. 

The Jewish-G-entile question was the all but insur- 
mountable one of the Apostle Paul's day, and no 
question was ever fraught with greater dangers to 
an incipient movement. To the Jews, the Gentiles 
were despicable and hateful, and to the Gentiles the 
Jews were already a hiss and by-word. In manners 
and morals they were in antipathy; in faith and wor- 
ship they were in antagonism. The prejudices and 
traditions of many generations had intensified the 
natural dislike between monotheists on the one hand, 
and polytheists on the other; between social and cer- 

19 



290 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



ernonial cleanness here, and lustful and idolatrous 
pollutions there; and finally, between peoples each 
alike proudly conscious of the divine choice in their 
own behalf, and as proudly convinced of the divine 
abandonment of all others. 

Christianity set herself to the problem of recon- 
ciling these irreconcilables, and aside from the influ- 
ence of the Gospel and of the Holy Spirit in regen- 
eration, the Apostle Paul's is by far the largest factor 
in the work. He seems from the first to have deter- 
mined upon two things, namely, that the liberty of 
the Gentiles should not be infringed, and that the 
unity of the church should not be disturbed. Not 
legislation, or creed formulation, but education, 
prudence, and brotherly love were the factors upon 
which he relied in the solution of the problem. 

It is impossible to say how much the Apostle Paul 
had to do in bringing about the first council (treated 
in a previous Essay)? but it is very like a work of his 
from first to last. We know that he was at Antioch 
when the proposition was made to go up to Jerusa- 
lem to the apostles and elders about the matter, and 
such a proposition would come naturally from one so 
fertile in methods and so desirous of conciliating as 
Paul. We know also that Paul was one of the dele- 
gates sent up to Jerusalem (Acts xv. 2), and we know 
that he conferred privately with the leading apostles 
or members of the Jerusalem church, "lest by any 
means he should run in vain " (Gal. ii. 2). His pri- 
vate conference (a mark of his prudence, by the 



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291 



way,) with such as " were of reputation," must have 
had much to do with the favorable decision of the 
council, and is not to be forgotten in our estimate 
of Paul's leadership upon the questions of liberty 
and union. Then, how graciously he accepted the 
compromise, and how promptly he went out among 
the Gentile churches, " delivering them the decrees 
for to keep." The council and the decrees were 
educational and prudential as related both to the 
Jews and the Gentiles. 

In several other respects, Paul's prudence is ad- 
mirably shown. First, when he could no longer be 
accompanied by Barnabas he chose Silas. Now Silas 
was a representative man of the Jerusalem church, a 
prophet, and an exhorter, and one of the brethren 
chosen to accompany Paul and Barnabas to Antioch 
when they delivered the decrees. By making this 
man his traveling-companion and yoke-fellow among 
the Gentiles, he shielded himself from the suspicions 
of the Jewish Christians, and he gained among the 
•Gentile Christians a double confirmation of the 
decrees. 

The circumcision of Timothy was another pruden- 
tial measure. Here no principle was at stake, inas- 
much as Timothy's mother was a Jewess, a point 
that Luke makes especially prominent (Acts xvi. 
1-3). 

Upon his last visit to Jerusalem, at the suggestion 
of James, Paul undertook to purify himself with the 
four men who had a vow, and to be at charges with 



292 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



them. This also was a prudential measure (Acts xxi. 
21-24). Paul could conscientiously do this, being a 
Jew, but we cannot imagine him enjoining it upon 
any Gentile. No doubt it had the desired effect upon 
Jerusalem Jews, for we are told that the disturbance 
was created by "Jews which were of Asia." 

It is a meaningful fact that succeeding every one 
of his great missionary journeys, Paul made a visit 
to Jerusalem. After his first missionary journey 
came the council in Jerusalem. At the close of his 
second journey, having landed at Cassarea, he went 
up and saluted the church in Jerusalem before he 
went down to Antioch (Acts xviii. 22). At the close 
of his third journey, he determined to go up to Jeru- 
salem, even at the risk of his life, and that though 
he was longing even then to visit Rome. He refused 
to be dissuaded from this visit, and said: " Behold, 
I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing 
the things that shall befall me there, save that the 
Holy Spirit witnesseth in every city, saying that 
bonds and afflictions abide me. But none of these 
things move me, neither count I my life dear unto 
myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and 
the ministry, which I have received of the Lord 
Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God " 
(Acts xx. 22-24). 

Why was he so intent upon reaching Jerusalem? 
Others could have carried and distributed the alms 
entrusted to him. Though he planned to reach the 
city by Pentecost, he must long since have come to 



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293 



look upon the Mosaic feasts as of no vital import- 
ance. But that he, the apostle to the Gentiles, 
should keep in touch with the mother church, that 
he should in person refute the falsehoods of the 
Judaizers, that he should report, as Peter did upon 
his return from Caesarea, the work of the Holy 
Spirit among the Gentiles, and that he should hold 
close the bonds of mutual knowledge and regard 
between these two peoples, — this was a matter of the 
first importance. These visits, therefore, were most 
highly prudential. 

Supreme above all else in the Apostle Paul's con- 
structive policy was the principle of love. One 
never sees it treated nowadays as a fundamental 
principle of unity, and yet that is what Paul made of 
it both theoretically and practically. Over all elo- 
quence and offices and gifts rises love; over faith 
and hope even rises love. Paul agrees with John in 
making love the highest orthodoxy, and the deepest 
heresy, hate. The thirteenth chapter of First Corin- 
thians is not a panegj-ric only; it is a union platform. 
Where love to Christ is supreme, faith cannot get 
far away from him, and where love toward men is, 
there follows a community of learning and faith. 
Therefore faith needs scarcely any other defense 
than love, and union scarcely any other bond. Our 
sins against the law of love have been the heaviest 
cross of heresy that the body of Christ has had to 
bear, and of all destructive isms, Cainism has been 
the most destructive. 



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STUDIES IN ACTS 



But Paul did not rest in panegyrics; he was a 
man of action as well as diction. How did he apply 
his union platform of love to the Jewish-Gentile 

controversy? 

By reason of persecution, or famine, or from some 
cause unknown, there were many poor saints iu Je- 
rusalem. Twice the Apostle Paul came bringing 
help from Gentile Christians, once from Antioch at 
the time of the famine, when he and Barnabas re- 
mained probably many months ministering to the 
needy; and once from the Gentile Christians of 
Galatia and Macedonia and Achaia. The poor Jew- 
ish believer, receiving his daily food for months at a 
time from the hands of Paul, and recognizing that 
it came from uncircumcised believers, or at least 
from a mixed church, must have had his heart grad- 
ually but also greatly softened on the subject of Gen- 
tile circumcision. Unless his own heart were of 
stone, it must have been borne in upon him that after 
all, though his Gentile benefactors bore not in the 
flesh the mark of Abraham, yet their brotherly 
hearts were sufficiently circumcised. 

" All hearts confess the saints elect 
Who, twain in faith, in love agree ; 
And melt not in an acid sect 
The Christian pearl of charity." 

The contributions from the churches of Galatia 
and Macedonia and Achaia must have been on a 
large scale. For a long time these churches had been 
gathering systematically, "laying by them in store 



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295 



as the Lord prospered them," and bringing it to- 
gether weekly at their Lord's day worship. In his 
first letter to the Corinthians Paul lays this work 
upon them, and in his second letter, written several 
months later, he praises them for their forwardness 
in it, and assures them that he has been boasting of 
them to the Macedonian Christians (I. Cor. xvi. 1 ; 
XL Cor. ix). The philosophy of Christian union 
that the Apostle Paul sees in this is expressed with 
delicacy but not with uncertainty in the following 
verses: 44 For the administration of this service not 
only supplieth the want of the saints, but abound- 
eth also through many thanksgivings unto God; 
seeing that through the proving of you by this min- 
istration they glorify God for the obedience of your 
confession unto the Gospel of Christ, and for the 
liberality of your contribution unto them and to all; 
while they themselves also, with supplication on 
your behalf, long after you by reason of the exceed- 
ing grace of God in you." Ah! There, instead of 
hair-splittings, and suspicions, and coldness, and 
alienations; instead of the bandying back and forth 
of ugly words, and prolonged discussions upon 
mooted points — there was 44 sweet charity," and the 
fruits of it, and the thanksgivings to God by reason 
of it, and Jews and Gentiles (wonderful! wonder- 
ful!) longing after one another because of the ex- 
ceeding grace of God thus discovered. Thus prac- 
tical love was made by the magic of the Gospel and 
management of Paul the solvent of the most uncon- 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



querable disagreements, and that hard old world in 
which hatred and warfare were the rule, with sel- 
dom an exception in favor of friendship and peace; 
in which there was not an asylum for the blind, or 
a hospital for the leper, or a home or a heart for an 
abandoned babe; in which clannishness was esteemed 
a virtue, and inter-ethnic charity was unknown, saw 
Jew and Gentile rise up together in the spirit of 
Christ's love to call each other blessed! O Logic, 
thou hast never wrought miracles like this! O Unity 
of Love, we still search for thee as for the Holy 
Grail ! Biting and devouring one another, we search 
by logic in the spirit of legalism for unity. We in- 
variably come back from our search torn and empty- 
handed, and the world does not say, "Behold how 
these brethren love one another." 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



PREFACE TO THE NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



The general purpose of this part of the work is 
briefly expressed in the Preliminary Essay, page 25. 
It may be said further that the plan and scope of 
the Essays precluded the treatment of many impor- 
tant passages. It is hoped that the Notes and Com- 
ments will be found to supply the deficiency thus 
necessitated, and that the work as a whole may there- 
fore fairly claim for itself a goodly degree of com- 
pleteness as a treatise upon Acts. 

In the treatment of chapters xxvii. and xxviii. 
it will be noticed that the dates assumed by Prof. 
Ramsay for the Apostle Paul's voyage to Rome, and 
consequently his first imprisonment there, are earlier 
by a year and a half or two years than those com- 
monly agreed upon. Whether Prof. Ramsay's chro- 
nological scheme can command general acceptance 
remains to be seen. The dates are important as 
fixing those also of the letters written from Rome; 
moreover the earlier dates give the ampler time for 
the labors attributed by some to the apostle after this 
imprisonment, namely, his visit to Greece and Asia 
Minor, his evangelization of Crete, and possibly a 
journey into Spain, and quite certainly the writing of 
the pastoral epistles. 

299 



300 PREFACE TO THE NOTES AND COMMENTS 

It will be observed that the Notes and Comments 
have, as a rule, no other order or connection than the 
very natural and simple one of the chapters and 
verses. In the few instances where there is a 
departure from this order the references embraced 
in the body of the text will, it is hoped, sufficiently 
guide the reader, thus avoiding foot-notes and mar- 
ginal references. Wherever in the Essays reference 
is made to the Notes or Comments it is invariably to 
this part of the work, and to the passage in hand. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

1. "The former treatise." Referring to the Gos- 
pel according to Luke. "First" rather than 
"former" in the original, the superlative indicating, 
as some suppose, Luke's intention to write a third 
treatise. 

"Theophilus." An unknown person. Called in 
the introduction to Luke's Gospel, "most excel- 
lent," an epithet in the original "technical and dis- 
tinctive," and used by Luke as implying equestrian 
rank. Accordingly, Theophilus was a Eoman officer, 
whose Roman name is not known, Theophilus being 
his baptismal name. "It has an important bearing 
on Luke's attitude to the Roman State that his work 
is addressed to a Roman officer who had become a 
Christian."— Prof. W. M. Ramsay. 

2. "Was taken up." The resurrection necessi- 
tates the ascension. It was not expedient that Jesus 
should abide upon earth. He could not again pass 
away from earth by the gates of death. The miracle 
of his ascension, therefore, naturally rounds out the 
miracle of his earthly presence. "The reality of 
such a fact as that related bv Luke in his account of 

301 



302 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



the ascension is indubitable, both from the stand- 
point of faith in the resurrection and from the 
standpoint of faith in general. The ascension is a 
postulate of faith." — Godet. 

3. "Infallible proofs." 44 The adjective here has 
no representative in the original. The Greek word 
signifies some sign or token manifest to the senses, as 
opposed to evidence given by witnesses." (Luke 
xxiv. 36-44; John xx. 24-30; I. John i. 1-3.)— Cam- 
bridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. 

''Being seen of them forty days." In the last 
chapter of his Gospel Luke omits chronological 
statements; here he gives a definite statement of 
time. There is no discrepancy. 

" Speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom 
of God." These talks of Jesus in his risen state! 
With the emphasis of his five wounds ! Could the 
disciples ever forget them? Could they be deceived? 
Was it not in his old-time style, inimitable, that he 
spoke, and did he not speak continually about the 
object of his life and death, namely, the kingdom of 
his Father? 

5. "Baptized with the Holy Spirit." A striking 
metaphor. It is to be understood in analogy with 
John's baptism. "Their spirits were as literally and 
completely immersed in the Holy Spirit (e. g. 9 on 
Pentecost, ch. ii. 1-4) as their bodies had been in the 
waters of Jordan." — Prof. J. W. McGarvey. 

6. "Wilt thou at this time restore again the king- 
dom to Israel?" Pathetic question! One of the 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



303 



most pregnant passages in the book. Contrast the 
worldly, temporal, carnal longings here expressed 
with the spiritual preaching of Pentecost, and see 
therein the miracle promised above in the baptism of 
the Holy Spirit, and the need of it. (Essays L and 
XIII.) 

8. "And ye shall be witnesses unto me both in 
Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and 
unto the uttermost part of the earth." The last 
recorded words of Jesus. Absolutely, this is a for- 
eign missionary commission. The Lord gives in his 
last sentence the boundary of his love, and makes the 
mission of his followers identical with it. It was his 
design that the earthly limits of our faith should 
become co-extensive with the earthly limits of limit- 
less love. 

11. "Easter Morning, 1883. — Our task is ended, 
and we also worship and look up. And we go back 
from this sight into a hostile world, to love, and to 
live, and to work for a Risen Christ. But as earth's day 
is growing dim, and, with earth's gathering darkness, 
breaks over it heaven's storm, we ring out — as of old 
they were wont, from church tower to the mariners 
that hugged the rock-bound coast — our Easter bells 
to guide them who are belated over the storm-tossed 
sea, beyond the breakers, into the desired haven. 
Ring out, earth, all thy Easter chimes; bring your 
offerings, all ye people; worship in faith, for — 'This 
Jesus, which was received up from you into heaven, 
shall so come in like manner as ye beheld him going 



304 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



into heaven. Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly.' " 
— Edersheim: Last 'paragraph of "Life and Times of 
Jesus the Messiah." 

12. 44 Then returned they unto Jerusalem." See 
Luke xxiv. 47, 49, 52. It was a bold stroke to begin 
at Jerusalem. 44 These things were not done in a 
corner." Thus the city that crucified Christ stands 
in witness of the birth of his church through all ages. 

14. 4 4 And Mary the mother of Jesus." Thus in 
prayer the Scriptures leave our Savior's mother. In 
the Scripture she worships, but never is worshiped. 
Her child Jesus is her Savior, even as he is ours, and 
to worship her is to worship a fellow-worshiper. 

"And with his brethren." 44 These are called 
(Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3) James, Joseph (or Joses), 
Simon and Judas, and are here clearly distinguished 
from the apostles, which shows that James the son 
of Alpheeus, and James the Lord's brother, were 
different persons." — Cambridge Bible for Schools 
and Colleges. 

18. 4 'And falling headlong, he burst asunder 
. . ." 4 4 There is a difference but no contradiction 
in the accounts given by Matthew (xxvii. 1-5) and 
Luke. Matthew does not say what happened to the 
body of Judas after he hanged himself; nor does 
Luke say what he did to himself ere he fell headlong 
and burst asunder in the midst. We have not the 
link to connect his act of suicide with what befell his 
body; but the two facts are in no sense at variance." 
— Ormiston. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



305 



"There is scarcely an American or English jury 
that would scruple to receive these two accounts as 
perfectly consistent." — Alexander. 

19. "In their proper tongue." This, in connec- 
tion with Col. iv. 9 and 14, is used by Paley in his 
"Horse Paulinse." Though not so convincing as 
many of the "undesigned coincidences," which he 
uses with great power, it has weight, and is a good 
example of his method. Had the writer of Acts 
been a Jew he would scarcely have said " their 
tongue." The indication, therefore, is that the 
writer was a Gentile. Now in Colossians the Apos- 
tle Paul refers to Aristarchus, Marcus, and Jesus 
who is called Justus, as being "of the circumcision." 
Then he refers to Epaphras, Luke, and Demas, as 
though they were not " of the circumcision." If this 
inference is correct, the two passages harmonize in 
indicating the Gentile extraction of Luke. The 
author says, "Though this may bear the appearance 
of great nicety and refinement, it ought not, perhaps, 
to be deemed imaginary." 

22. "To be a witness with us of his resurrec- 
tion." The resurrection is the cardinal fact. It is 
the one miracle necessitated by all others in the his- 
tory of Jesus, and explanatory of them. Back from 
this, link by link, we trace the line of his life till we 
reach his miraculous conception; and forward from 
this we trace link by link, the miraculous deeds of 
his apostles, the miraculous birth of his church, and 
its majestic spiritual march through that ancient 

20 



306 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



world. Edersheim, reviewing the "vision hypothe- 
sis," and other rationalistic theories antagonistic to 
the account of the resurrection, concludes, " The 
historical student is shut up to the simple acceptance 
of the narrative. The great fact itself," he says, 
" may unhesitatingly be pronounced that best estab- 
lished in history." Godet, as quoted by the same 
author, tells us that Strauss admits that the church 
would never have arisen if the apostles had not had 
unshaken faith in the resurrection of Jesus. "This 
faith of the apostles would never have arisen unless 
the resurrection had been a true historical fact." 

To the student of the Gospels and Acts, and of^ 
Jewish history and human nature, the resurrection of 
Jesus is an intellectual necessity. 

25. "That he might go to his own place." Pre- 
cisely. That is where we all shall go. The expres- 
sion is pregnant. It is the conclusion of all argu- 
ments upon the question of the future. Justice and 
mercy unite to fit the immortal spirits of men into 
their eternal niches. .As to restoration of the 
wicked? 

" A tenderer light than moon or snn, 
Than song of earth a sweeter hymn. 
May shine and sound forever on, 
And thou be deaf and dim. 

" Forever round the Mercy-seat 
The guiding lights of love shall burn ; 
But what if, habit-bound, thy feet 
Should lack the will to turn?" 

— WMttier: " The Answer." 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



307 



26. "And the lot fell upon Matthias." Never 
during the presence of Jesus did the apostles cast 
lots; and never after the Holy Spirit came upon 
them. For a little while left to themselves, they fall 
into this weakness. Was Matthias not an apostle 
then? In chapter vi. 2, the twelve are spoken of, 
though Paul was not yet chosen, thus evidently in- 
cluding Matthias. Then with Paul there were thir- 
teen, and with Barnabas (xiv. 14) there were four- 
teen. And if Andronicus and Junias (Variorum 
reading) may be counted (Rom. xvi. 7), there were 
sixteen. We should not draw the lines too rigidly 
around official names and numbers. 

CHAPTER II. 

1. " When the day of Pentecost was fully come." 
In A. D. 30, on the 27th of May, on a Sunday, ac- 
cording to Meyer and Schaff. For the discussion 
of this intricate and interesting subject, reference is 
made to the authors named, the first in his commen- 
tary on Acts, and the second in his History of the 
Apostolic Church. Here, therefore, at the birth of 
the Church of Christ begins the Sunday, or First 
Day, or Lord's Day worship on the part of the 
Church. It is doubtful if the Gentile Christians 
ever kept the Mosaic Sabbath. There is evidence 
that the Jewish Christians, while still keeping the 
Jewish Sabbath, kept also the remembrance of the 
Lord's resurrection on the first day of the week. 



308 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



" The church always celebrated Pentecost on Sunday, 
the fiftieth day after Easter — which likewise always 
falls on Sunday." — $ chaff. The disciples in Troas 
met together on the first day of the week to break 
bread (xx. 7). The Corinthian Christians were ex- 
horted to make their offerings to charity upon the 
first day of the week (I. Cor. xvi. 2). 

Little weight one way or the other belongs to the 
argument in favor of the creational Sabbath. The 
resurrection of Jesus and the inception of his church 
are to the world events quite as significant as that of 
creation itself. However, there is an argument well 
worthy of notice in favor of our Sunday being the 
creational Sabbath. " The ancient nations all about 
the Jews devoted the first day of the week to what 
was at first the chief symbol of God, and then the 
chief god, the sun, calling it Sunday. This holy day 
was strangely enough one day after that of the Jews. 
This remarkable fact may be explained by the theory 
of many scholars, with which the Scriptures harmon- 
ize, that the first day Sabbath, which Adam be- 
queathed to all nations — not under that name, how- 
ever — was at the Exodus changed for the Jews only 
as a sign of their separation, and a protection against 
idolatry, to the preceding day, this change continu- 
ing until the ceremonial mission of the Jewish peo- 
ple had been completed. Then the Savior buried in 
his own grave, by sleeping there on Saturday, the 
Jewish part of the Sabbath — its sacrifices and its 
order in the week — partly because Christians now 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



309 



needed to be separated from Jewish ceremonies as 
much as the Jews of the Exodus needed to be sepa- 
rated from the heathen days of worship ; partly be- 
cause the narrow Jewish dispensation was now to 
give place to one as broad as mankind, which called 
for a return on the part of the Jewish Christians to 
the original Sabbath of Adam." — Grafts: The 
Sabbath for Man. See also his references to the 
arguments of Rev. James Johnston and others. Of 
Exodus xvi. he says: "Many learned men find in 
this chapter evidence that the Sabbath was set back 
one day at the Exodus." 

" It is remarkable that the day of the giving of 
the law was celebrated throughout the Jewish ages 
without one word in the Old Testament to indicate 
that it was designed to commemorate that event. In 
like manner the day of the week on which the Holy 
Spirit descended has been celebrated from that time 
to this, though no formal reason is given in the New 
Testament for its observance. The resurrection of 
Jesus and the descent of the Holy Spirit are of such 
transcendent importance, that all minds agree at 
once in attributing to them, and especially to the 
former, the celebration of the day." — Prof. J. W. 
McGarvey. 

" Very soon, alongside of the Sabbath, and among 
Gentile Christians instead of it, the first day of the 
week as the day of Christ's resurrection began to be 
observed as a festival." — Kurtz: Church History. 

How far this observance was from the solemnity 



310 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



and the legalism of the Jewish Sabbath is indicated 
by this phrase, 44 a festival." Professor Zahn of 
Erlangen is more positive than Prof. Kurtz in his de- 
scription of the free and joyful, rather than the legal- 
istic, character of the day. He says: "The Chris- 
tians of the first three centuries 'never thought of 
regarding the Sunday as the continuation of the Jew- 
ish Sabbath, or even to call this day ' Sabbath ' — the 
day of the Lord, referring to Christ, being the name 
uniformly used. If we ask the Christians of the 
earliest centuries, the oldest witnesses to the idea of 
Sunday, for the reason which they had in marking 
this one day above all the rest, they will with one 
voice declare, ' We celebrate this day because Christ 
on this day arose from the dead.' The Sunday was 
for them a weekly recurrence of the Easter festival. 
Throughout Sunday was regarded as a day of joy." 

4. "And they were filled with the Holy Spirit, 
and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit 
gave them utterance." 

"At this moment was performed the proper act of 
inspiration, which forms, in some degree, the con- 
tinuation in the apostles of the incarnation of the 
Word. Inspiration is as much a practical as a theo- 
retical process. It is communication as well of life 
as of the knowledge of Christ, and affects not only 
the subsequent writings of the apostles and evan- 
gelists, but also all their oral instructions. Hence- 
forth they always spoke, and wrote, and acted, out of 
the fullness of the Spirit. He was the pervading and 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



311 



controlling principle of their entire moral and relig- 
ious being. This supernatural equipment was their 
solemn ordination and inauguration to the apostolic 
office. 

"The effects of this miracle were in perfect keep- 
ing with such a creative beginning, and with its vast 
significancy for the future. Among them we must 
distinguish (1) the speaking with tongues, or the 
uttering of the new life in the form of praise and 
prayer; (2) the testimony of the apostles concerning 
Christ, given in intelligible language to the assembled 
multitude; . . . (3) the result of this preaching, 
the conversion and baptism of three thousand Israel- 
ites." — Schaff: History of the Apostolic Church. 

6-12. These verses are the best possible commen- 
tary upon verse four. The efforts of many critics to 
rid the account of its amazingly miraculous element 
cannot be said to have succeeded. Such efforts can 
be entertained only on the supposition of a mixture 
of the mythical with the historical, that is, by doing 
violence to the history. Hackett emphasizes the fact 
that, "Critics who would explain away the reality of 
the miracle admit that it was the writer's intention 
to record a miracle." Exemplifying this, he quotes 
Meyer: "The other tongues are to be considered, 
according to the text, as absolutely nothing else than 
languages which were different from the native lan- 
guage of the speakers." 

17. " The last days." The transition period from 
the old dispensation to the new, beginning prac- 



312 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



tically with the preaching of John the Baptist and 
ending with the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 
70 A. D. Within this period the prophecy of Joel 
finds its fulfillment. 

23. Here God's plans and man's wickedness are 
brought into striking contrast. " What God does he 
from the first intends," and the spirit of his intent as 
regards the delivering up of Christ is expressed in 
John iii. 18 — " God so loved the world that he gave 
his only-begotten Son." Against this goodness there 
were raised the "wicked hands" of men. 

24. "Whom God hath raised up." This one 
word "God," as it is used in the Bible, is the explan- 
ation of all that is miraculous. God's agency was 
the Apostle Paul's final argument in favor of the 
resurrection. " Why should it be thought a thing 
incredible with you that God should raise the 
dead?" (xxvi.8). 

So far from the resurrection being impossible, it 
was on the contrary not possible that Jesus should 
"be holden of the travail-pains of death." Jesus, 
speaking in strangest, tenderest strains of his Fath- 
er's love, says of his life, "I have power to lay it 
down, and I have power to take it again" (John 
x. 16-18). 

27. "Hades." Thus in the Eevised. It is the 
Greek word brought over, as there is no English 
word precisely suited to its translation. It means 
quite literally unseen, and is used to represent the 
place of the dead. In Luke xxiii.43 Jesus calls it 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



313 



paradise. " The word occurs in the New Testament 
eleven times, and is rendered by the word hell in 
every instance except one (I. Cor. xv. 55), where it is 
rendered grave. In no instance does it mean hell 
as that word is now commonly undertoocl, 
nor in any case does it necessarily mean grave. 
When it is said that the soul of Christ was not left in 
Hades — unhappily rendered in our version, hell — the 
real meaning is that his soul was not left in the 
abode of separate spirits, whither it went at death, 
even as his body did not remain in the grave where 
it was laid after his crucifixion." — Ormiston. 

36. This is the climax of the sermon. Its rhetor- 
ical effect must have been terrible, The antithesis 
between God's deed and man's is absolute. On the 
basis of the resurrection the apostle declares the 
Lordship and Messiahship of Jesus, and boldly 
charges his hearers with the murder of their "Lord 
and Christ." 

38. " What a definite and complete answer and 
promise of salvation! The repentance demands a 
change of ethical disposition as the moral condition 
of being baptized." — Meyer. 

Not only is the answer "definite and complete," 
but it is definitely and completely in keeping with 
Christ's commission. (Matt, xxviii. 19, 20; Mark 
xv i . 15, 16; Luke xxiv. 47). 

"Be baptized." "Baptism, which our Lord in- 
stituted at his departure from earth, meets us in the 
Christian form on the first Pentecost in intimate 



314 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



connection with the preaching of the Gospel. As 
to its nature and import, it appears as the church- 
founding sacrament and the outward medium of the 
forgiveness of sins and the communication of the 
Holy Spirit. It is the solemn ceremony of reception 
and incorporation into the communion of the visible 
church and of Jesus Christ its head. Hence Paul 
calls it a putting on of Christ (Gal. iii. 27), a union 
into one body by one Spirit (I. Cor. xii. 13), a wash- 
ing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit 
(Tit. iii. 5), and a being buried with Christ and rising 
again with him to a new and holy life (Eom. vi. 4), 
. Finally, as to the outward mode of adminis- 
tering this ordinance, immersion and not sprinkling 
was unquestionably the original, normal form. This 
is shown by the very meaning of the Greek words 
used to designate the rite. Then again, by the 
analogy of the baptism of John, which was performed 
in the Jordan (Matt. iii. 6, 16; Mark i. 9). Further- 
more, by the New Testament comparisons of baptism 
with the passage through the Red Sea (I. Cor. x. 2), 
with the flood (I. Pet. iii. 21), with a bath (Eph. 
v. 26; Tit. iii. 5), with a burial and resurrection 
(Rom. vi. 4; Col. ii. 12). Finally by the general usage 
of ecclesiastical antiquity which was always immer- 
sion (as it is to this day in the Oriental and also in 
the Grseco-Russian churches) ; pouring and sprink- 
ling being substituted only in cases of urgent neces- 
sity, such as sickness and approaching death." — 
Schaff: History of the Apostolic Church, pp. 565 
and 568. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



315 



Kurtz, in speaking of the constitution, worship and 
discipline of the first church, dismisses baptism in a 
single sentence: " Baptism was administered by com- 
plete immersion (Acts viii.38) in the name of Christ 
or the Trinity." 

Prof. Stifler, in his recent "Introduction to the 
Book of Acts," calls attention to the emphasis placed 
upon baptism at the beginning of each new cycle in 
the missionary record. First, at Pentecost; secondly, 
at the home of Cornelius upon the admission of Gen- 
tiles to the church; thirdly, at the conversions of 
Lydia and the Philippian jailer, the beginning of the 
church in Europe. 

One of the very latest of recent great authorities, 
Prof. Sanday, in his commentary on Romans, treats 
the sixth chapter of Romans, vv. 1-5, as follows: 

"Baptism has a double function. (1) It brings 
the Christian into personal contact with Christ, so 
close that it may be fitly described as a union with 
him. (2) It expresses symbolically a series of acts 
corresponding to the redeeming acts of Christ. 

"Immersion. Death. 

" Submersion. Burial (the ratification of death.) 

" Emergence. Resurrection. 

"All these the Christian has to undergo in a moral 
and spiritual sense, and by means of his union with 
Christ. As Christ by his death on the cross ceased 
from all contact with sin, so the Christian, united 
with Christ in his baptism, has done once for all with 
sin, and lives henceforth a reformed life dedicated to 



316 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



God. t (This at least is the ideal, whatever may be the 
reality). Act then as men who have thrown off the 
dominion of sin. Dedicate all your powers to God. 
Be not afraid; Law, Sin's ally, is superseded in its 
hold over you by grace." 

It would be hard to find in the English language a 
more graphic and explicit description of immersion 
and its meaning than Prof. Sanday has given in this 
paraphrase of the third and fourth verses of this 
sixth chapter of Romans. 

46. "And they continued daily with one accord in 
the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, 
did eat their meat with gladness." 

"In the apostolic period the Lord's Supper was 
celebrated daily, at least where the circumstances 
allowed of daily worship. After the manner of its 
institution and the analogy of the Jewish feast of the 
Passover, it was connected with a simple meal of 
brotherly love, which afterward (first in Jude 12) 
came to be called 'agape,' or love feast. Origin- 
ally this arrangement was connected in the church at 
Jerusalem with the community of goods, the Chris- 
tians considering themselves as one household. The 
celebration of the communion, it is commonly sup- 
posed, was the closing of the daily social feast, and 
the earthly food was thus sanctified by the heavenly 
bread of life. Yet it is possible that even in the 
apostolic church, as in the second century, the com- 
munion took place in the morning and the love-feast 
in the evening. Then the profanation of the latter 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



317 



in the Corinthian congregation can be better ex- 
plained; whereas on the supposition of the imme- 
diate union of the two, it would be doubly strange. " 
— 8 chaff: History of the Apostolic Church. With 
this Neander and Kurtz and Fisher are in almost 
precise agreement. 

CHAPTER III. 

1. "Now Peter and John went up together into 
the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth 
hour." 

Here Luke begins the history of the first persecu- 
tion, which comprehends this and the following 
chapter down to the thirty-second verse. There he 
resumes the history of the Jerusalem church. (See 
Essay III.) 

The continuance of the Temple-worship on the 
part of the apostles is to be noted. Their separation 
from the Jewish cult was necessarily gradual. Per- 
haps the Apostle Paul alone saw clearly not only the 
liberty but the need of an entire separation from it. 
However, the Apostles Peter and John make their 
Temple-worship the occasion of the exaltation of 
Christ, using Moses as a witness for him (iii. 22), 
putting his name above every name, and declaring 
his exclusiveness as Savior (iv. 10-12). 

7. "His feet and ancle bones." "The words in 
the original are found no where else in the New Tes- 
tament. They are of a technical character, and their 



318 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



use, together with other features of the exact 
description of the cripple's case, indicate that we 
have before us the language of the physician (Luke, 
the beloved physician, Col. iv. 14), It is hardly pos- 
sible to dwell too strongly on indications of this kind, 
which indirectly mark in the history something which 
is likewise noted in the Epistles. Those who would 
assign the second century as the date of the composi- 
tion of the Acts, must assume for their supposed 
writer the keenest appreciation of every slight allu- 
sion in the letters of Paul, and at the same time an 
ability to let his knowledge peep out only in hints 
like that which we have in this verse. Such persons, 
while rejecting all that is miraculous in the story as 
we have it, ask us to believe in such a writer as 
would be himself almost a miracle for his powers of 
observation and the skill with which he has employed 
them." — Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. 
See also ch. xxviii. 8. The argument in this para- 
graph is of the nature of that used with such com- 
plete effect by William Paley in his "Hor^e Paulinse," 
though this application of it seems not to have been 
noted by him. 

19. "Repent ye therefore, and turn again" 
(Revised Version). "The word convert has received 
much ongrowth of meaning since the A. V. was 
made. The same word is well rendered (xi. 21), 'A 
great number believed and turned unto the Lord.' " 
— Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. 

"That your sins may be blotted out." "The idea 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



319 



of the forgiveness of sins is here represented under 
the figure of the erasure of a handwriting (Col. 
ii. 14; Ps. li, 9; Isa. xliii. 25). Baptism is not here 
expressly named as in ii. 38, but was now understood 
of itself, seeing that not long before thousands were 
baptized; and the thought of it has suggested the 
figurative expression of blotting out, namely, by 
the water of baptism. The causa meritoria of the 
forgiveness of sins is contained in verse 18 (the 
suffering of Jesus); the causa apprehendens (faith) 
is contained in the required repentance and conver- 
sion." — Meyer: Commentary on Acts. 

"When the times of refreshing shall come." 
6 4 Peter conceives that the times of refreshing and the 
Parousia will set in as soon as the Jewish nation is 
converted to the acknowledgment of Jesus as Mes- 
siah. It required a further revelation to teach him 
that the Gentiles were to be converted — and that 
directly, and by way of proselytism — to Christ 
(ch. x)."— Meyer. 

Light is thrown upon vv. 19-21 by reference to ch. 
i. 6. Evidently the Apostle Peter is advancing., but 
there is still a lingering hope that the Messiah may 
yet be the King of Israel. Spite of this, however, 
the Holy Spirit leads him to the declaration of a 
purely spiritual Gospel (v. 26). 

20. "And he shall send Jesus Christ." "The 
reference is certainly to an objective and not subjec- 
tive advent. It is a matter of dispute in what man- 
ner the apostles regarded the second coming of 



320 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



Christ. In all they were so engrossed with it that 
they lost sight of intermediate events; it was the 
object of their earnest desire; the period was indeed 
concealed from them, but they continually looked 
forward to it; they expected it as that which might 
occur at any moment. Afterwards, as revelation 
disclosed itself, and the course of Providence was 
developed, they did not expect it to occur in their 
days. Paul especially seems to have regarded it as 
an event in the remote future, and cautions his con- 
verts not to be shaken in mind or to be troubled, as 
that the day of Christ was at hand (II. Thess. ii. 2). 
The precise period of the advent, we are informed by 
our Lord, formed no part of the divine revelation; 
it was designedly left in uncertainty by God." — 
Gloag : Quoted by American Editor of Meyer's Com- 
mentary on Acts. 

CHAPTER IY. 

2. "Being grieved that they taught the people." 
This is always a great source of grief to such conser- 
vatism as takes the form of dogmatism and dema- 
gogism. Too much popular intelligence is not con- 
genial to kingcraft and priestcraft. The New Testa- 
ment is the hand-book of Protestantism, and Christ- 
ianity is fertile of democracy. 

"Other religions say, Keep the people in the dark. 
Christianity says, Go ye into ail the world and 
preach the Gospel to every creature. Other religions 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



321 



draw a screen, as Pythagoras lectured from behind a 
curtain to his disciples; and from behind a screen 
they mutter their unintelligible incantations. Chris- 
tianity lifts its banner, throws it out upon the willing 
wind, and on it is written, ' This thing was not done 
in a corner.' By the compass of its mission, by the 
universality of its speech, by its chivalry of philan- 
thropy, I ask you to adjudge to Christianity the palm 
of all the religions of the world. Other religions are 
philosophies, philosophies only; Christianity is a 
Gospel." — Joseph Parker. 

7. "By what power, or by what name have ye 
done this?" "Beware of that point of thought in 
which you turn your religion into a piece of meta- 
physical inquiry. It is at that point that Christianity 
is often defeated in her most beneficent purposes. 
What did the learned men say? They wanted to go 
into the ways and means, and to analyze what we 
now call the modus operandi. They wanted to turn 
this question into a metaphysical inquiry. Instead of 
accepting the man, the healed man, the concrete, 
positive, indisputable fact, they wanted to lure the 
apostles and those who followed them into meta- 
physical quagmires and difficulties. . . . Chris- 
tianity rests on facts, not opinions." — Joseph Parker. 

13. "Perceived that they were unlearned and 
ignorant men." The scribes perceived this of Peter 
and John. But what was their learning? The 
knowledge of the Mishna and the G-ernara, the tradi- 
tions of the older scribes, the Sopherim, and the 

21 



322 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



commentaries upon these traditions. They had 
exalted these traditions and traditions upon tradi- 
tions above the law of Moses, "making the law of 
none effect by them" (Matt. xv. 6). The tendency 
of their traditional trifling was to make men punc- 
tilious but not magnanimous. The most insignificant 
affairs of life were regulated by absolute laws, and 
when these became too burdensome, as in the case of 
the Sabbath laws, they resorted to casuistry to get rid 
«f their own legalism, thus breeding hypocrisy side 
:by side with punctiliousness. Hence the awful 
denunciation of the Savior in the twenty-third chap- 
ter of Matthew. That chapter is full of the very 
thunders and lightnings, the withering flashings and 
threatenings of the judgment throne of the Eternal, 
and it must stand forever in the literature of the 
world as the most tremendous and appalling rebuke 
upon that bigotry and hypocrisy which is begotten of 
tradition and pride and legalism and casuistry. 

The following is Farrar's characterization of the 
teaching of these men who found Peter and John 
"unlearned and ignorant." "The teaching of the 
scribes was narrow, dogmatical, material ; it was cold 
in manner, frivolous in matter, second-hand and iter- 
ative in its very essense; with no freshness in it, no 
force, no fire; servile to all authority, opposed to all 
independence; at once erudite and foolish, at once 
contemptuous and mean, full of balanced inference 
and orthodox hesitancy and impossible literalism; 
intricate with legal pettiness and labyrinthine system; 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



323 



elevating mere memory above genius, and repetition 
above originality, concerned only about priests and 
Pharisees, in temple and synagogue, or school, or 
Sanhedrin, and mostly occupied with things infinite- 
ly little." 

" The Rabbinical schools," according to the same 
author, " in their meddling, carnal, superficial [spirit 
of word-weaving and letter-worship, had spun large 
accumulations of worthless subtlety all over the 
Mosaic law. Among other things they had wasted 
their idleness in fantastic attempts to count and 
classify and weigh and measure all the separate com- 
mandments of the ceremonial and moral law. They 
had come to the sapient conclusion that there were 
248 affirmative precepts, being as many as the mem- 
bers of the human body, and 365 negative precepts, 
being as many as the arteries and veins, or the days 
of the year; the total being 613, which was also the 
number of the letters in the decalogue. They arrived 
at the same result, from the fact that the Jews 
were commanded (Num. xv. 38) to wear fringes 
(tsitsith) on the corners of their tallith bound with 
a thread of blue; and as each fringe had eight 
threads and five knots, and the letters of the word 
tsitsith makes 600, the total number of command- 
ments was, as before, 613." 

Mr. J. Paterson Smyth, who is a generous critic of 
the Talmud, calls it, nevertheless, "A vast and tan- 
gled mass of ancient lore," and says that, " At times 
the reader, wandering through the pages of nonsense 



324 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



that these wise sages wrote, will feel almost a sym- 
pathy with the belief of Carlyle, that nine out of 
ten men are fools, and he would not like to say too 
much about the tenth." 

44 The Mishna," says Edersheim, " in an extreme- 
ly curious section, tells us how on Sabbaths the 
Jewesses of Arabia night wear their long veils, and 
those of India the kerchief round the head, custom- 
ary in those countries, without incurring guilt of 
desecrating the holy day by needlessly carrying what, 
in the eyes of the law, would be a burden; while in 
the rubric for the Day of Atonement we have it 
noted that the dress that the High Priest wore 
between the evenings of the great fast — that is, as 
the afternoon darkened into evening — was of the 
most costly Indian stuff." 

The Mishna classifies thirty-nine different kinds of 
work by which the guilt of Sabbath-breaking should 
be incurred. The schools of Shammai and Hillel 
differed as to whether or not an egg laid on a feast 
day should be eaten the same day, Hillel taking the 
ground that it should not. The first of the seven 
treatises of the third part of the Mishna discusses 
the law found in Deut. xxv. 5-9. "Its first section 
may give a good idea of the manner of the Mishna. 
Fifteen women free their rival wives and their rival's 
rivals, from shoe-pulling and brother's marriage to 
the world's end. His daughter (the dead brother's 
wife being the daughter of a surviving brother), 
son's daughter or daughter's daughter; his wife's 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



325 



daughter, wife's son's daughter, or wife's daughter's 
daughter; his mother-in-law, or mother-in-law's 
mother, father-in-law's mother; his sister on the 
mother's side, mother's sister, or wife's sister, and 
the wife of his brother by the mother's side, and the 
wife of his brother who was not alive at the same 
time with him, and his daughter-in-law; all these 
free their rival's wives." — M' CUntocJc and Strong. 

Triflers versed in such lore as this discovered that 
Peter and John were "unlearned and ignorant men!" 

" They took knowledge of them that they had been 
with Jesus." They found in them a freedom, bold- 
ness, and originality that could have been acquired 
only in the school of Christ. They heard from these 
disciples a tone of authority that awoke within their 
guilty souls the echoes and the terrors of Christ's 
mighty pleadings and warnings. These Spirit-moved 
men appealed directly to the heart of nature, to the 
conscience of man, and the throne of God. Never in 
Rabbinical schools could they have learned to say, 
44 Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken 
unto you more than unto God, judge ye." 

32. " One heart and one soul; . . . all things 
common." "Each felt that he held his possessions 
only as a trust, and if occasion called for it they were 
to be given up. Such love toward one another Christ 
had foretold (John xiii. 35). All those who have 
sketched a perfect society, as Plato in his Republic, 
and Sir Thomas More in his Utopia, have placed 
among their regulations this kind of community of 



326 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



goods which was established by the first Christians. 
In theory it is the perfection of a commonwealth, but 
there is need of perfection in the citizens before it 
can be realized." — Cambridge Bible for Schools and 
Colleges. 

44 There is in many of the aspirations and aims of 
communism a certain marked sympathy or harmony 
with the ideals of Christianity. What is best in it 
has come from the teachings of Galilee. The sense 
of human brotherhood between rich and poor, the 
sympathy with the unhappy laboring masses of the 
world, the duty of allowing every human being 
the highest possible use of his faculties, the aversion 
to the deceit and fraud so often characteristic of 
commerce, the opposition to the selfishness of com- 
petition, the horror of war of the Socialists, the 
aspect of property as a fund for the good of all — all 
these are plainly reflections from that light which 
shone eighteen centuries ago from the hills of 
Judaea." — Charles Boring Brace. 

" There was a time when labor leaders were chiefly 
prophets of future Utopias. High ideals are of great 
value. Without them there is sure to be low achieve- 
ment. But impossible or extravagant ideals, or ideals 
whose achievement is too remote, are of doubtful 
utility. The early communistic ideals usually repre- 
sent their industrial heaven on earth as achieved with 
impossible suddenness and impossible sinlessness. 
Labor leaders have abandoned such ideals, but their 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 327 

critics are still bombarding the empty forts." — 
Crafts: Practical Christian Sociology. 

Communism has been proposed as a panacea for 
social ills. In the case of Ananias (v. 1-5) it did not 
cure covetousness and lying. If ever there is to be 
a successful communistic state it must be an effect 
rather than a cause. Nevertheless, is there not much 
in this voluntary communism of the first church to 
cause present-day Christians, looking back upon it 
and also upon the world around them, to pause and 
think, and possibly pray? "There are sad children 
sitting in the market-place, who indeed cannot say 
to you, We have piped unto you and you have not 
danced; but eternally shall say to you, We have 
mourned unto you and ye have not lamented." — Bus- 
kin: Crown of Wild Olive. Here in this young 
church was a state so intensely spiritual as to bring 
into subjection the whole material side of life, the 
directly reverse of that described by Tennyson — 

"When the poor are hoveled and hustled together; each sex like 
swine ; 

When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie." 



328 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



CHAPTER V. 

1-11. The account of Ananias and Sapphira has 
an evidential value which is thus presented in the 
Cambridge Bible for Schools: "The narrative with 
which this chapter commences is one which none but 
a veracious narrator would have inserted where it 
stands. The last chapter concludes with a descrip- 
tion of the unity of heart and soul which prevailed 
among the brethren, and expressly notices that all 
were filled with the Holy Spirit. But as among the 
Twelve there was a Judas, so into the infant church 
there had intruded two at least whose professions 
w r ere not sincere, and who were unworthy of the gifts 
of grace which, with the rest, they had received. 
The offense of Ananias and Sapphira showed con- 
tempt for God, vanity and ambition in the offenders, 
and utter disregard of the corruption they were 
bringing into the society. Such sin, committed in 
spite of the light which they possessed, called for a 
special mark of the Divine indignation, and to those 
who, likewise filled with the Spirit, knew all that had 
been done, and why it was done, there is no shock 
produced by the terrible doom of the sinners, nor 
any language employed in the narration but the 
plainest and simplest. A late compiled story would 
have enlarged and spoken apologetically on the rea- 
sons for such judgment, and would not have pre- 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



329 



sented us with a bare recital of facts without 
comment." 

"I was told of persons who were supposed to be 
worth five and twenty thousand pounds that at the 
communion of the Lord's Table never contribute a 
coin, but put in the communion card alone. Is it 
possible? Thy money perish with thee. Keep it; 
keep it. Take it in the coffin with thee. Do insist 
upon having it there. Make a pillow of it ; make a 
footstool of it; make a lining of it. Keep it, thou 
whited sepulcher! Ananias lied without speaking, 
and that is the worst form of falsehood. The blun- 
dering speaker of a lie may be converted; but the 
actor of a lie can only be killed. ... To bring 
my piece, and lay it down as if it were all, can any 
atheist stab the Christ of God so far as that? O 
Church of the living God! conversion must begin 
within thee; and then the fire will burn, and throw 
out its happy influence upon the wide circumference, 
and there shall be joy in the presence of the angels 
of God over a prodigal Church, repentant and 
returned." — Joseph Parker. 

13. "And of the rest durst no man join himself to 
them." Already the church was a strange, great 
body. It was unique in the midst of a nation that 
was unique. It had appropriated Solomon's Porch 
as its place of worship, and there daily, in the cap- 
ital city of the nation, in the central sanctuary of the 
nation, surrounded by the priests and the populace 
that had murdered Jesus, in the midst of multitudes 



330 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



of native and foreign worshipers, its members 
preached and prophesied and wrought miracles, and 
rebuked lying and covetousness with the death pen- 
alty, and overawed the rulers, and were magnified of 
the people. They were a city set on a hill. Christ, 
by the price of his blood, had not lit this candle to be 
put under a bushel. Within one year the Jews of 
the whole world must have known of this church and 
its majestic, miraculous presence in their temple 
courts. 

34. "Gamaliel, a doctor of the law." Grandson 
and disciple of the great Hillel. At his feet Paul sat 
(xxii. 3). He was a member of the Sanhedrin dur- 
ing the reigns of Tiberias, Caligula, and Claudius, 
and was probably for some time president of the 
council. The school of Hillel was more liberal than 
that of Shammai, and the advice of Gamaliel on this 
occasion is that of a judicial mind. It is possible 
that the Christian church owes much more to this 
man than appears in this chapter. Was it from this 
man that the Apostle Paul received the germs of that 
free and judicial style of thought that gave him such 
a transcendent place among the apostles, and made 
him the father of Gentile Christianity? Such a mind 
when enlightened by the Gospel must also have 
among its forces revulsion from the endless and 
worse than trivial disputes that engaged these two 
great schools. About the egg laid on the Sabbath 
the schools of Hillel and Shammai disputed till there 
grew from their discussions a whole treatise of the 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



331 



Talmud, occupying seventy-nine pages, and entitled 
Beza, z, e., The Egg. But why should we smile at 
these ancient conscientious triflers? What a treatise 
could be gathered up from current religious (?) lit- 
erature, and entitled, not The Egg, but The Organ ! 
or The Vestments ! or The Posture ! or The Validity 
of Orders ! or Hooks and Eyes ! or Standing Collars ! 
or The Sisters' Caps! or The Mustache! These are 
burning questions in respective schools of present- 
day triflers and traditionalists, the children by direct 
descent of spiritual punctiliousness of the pot wash- 
ers and gnat strainers and neglecters of love and 
judgment and mercy that Jesus condemned. 

"As to the speech of Gamaliel, I accept it every 
word. Gamaliel gives me the only conditions the 
church ever ought to ask for: To be left alone to 
carry out her own policy, and to realize the results of 
her own conception of faith. As a Christian teacher 
I have no right to ask to be heard at the expense of 
any other man. Let Theudas speak, let Judas of 
Galilee speak, and when they are done, let the Chris- 
tian speaker make his appeal, and 'the God that 
answereth by fire let him be God.' Let Socrates 
conduct his dialogue, let Seneca read his moral 
proverbs; let every man have all the hearing which 
he demands, and when they are done let us hear 
what Christ of Nazareth has to say, and 'the God 
that answereth by fire let him be God.' Christianity 
is nothing if it is not heroically fearless." — Joseph 
Parker. 



332 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



36, 37. Theudas and Judas. Josephus, as quoted 
in the Cambridge Bible for Schools, says: "At this 
time (£. e., in the days when Varus was president of 
Syria) there were ten thousand other disorders in 
Judsea, which were like tumults. . . Judaea was 
full of robberies, and whenever the several compa- 
nies of the rebels could light upon any one to lead 
them, he was created a king im mediately.' ' Here is 
a glimpse at the desperadoes of the time, who, but 
for the strong hand of Eome, would have ruined 
everything. Contrast with them the leadership of 
Jesus, and the ministries of his disciples. 

CHAPTER VI. 

1. "And in those days, when the number of disci- 
ples was increased." With the growing church there 
came perplexing problems, and there was no law for 
their solution. In this case the apostles, led by the 
Holy Spirit, resorted to the principle of expediency, 
and appointed a committee of seven. This is the 
beginning of the office and work of the deacons, 
though these seven men are not called deacons. The 
name of the office arises from the Greek word used 
by the apostles in proposing their appointment. It 
is used by Paul as the designation of an office in 
I. Tim. iii. 10 and 13. The first churches, how- 
ever, allowed great liberty in official matters. One of 
these men, Philip, is better known as an evangelist 
than as a deacon. According to Acts xi. 30, the 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



333 



elders of the Jerusalem church had charge of the 
charities. Indeed, the New Testament references to 
men and their offices and their work are so varied as 
to indicate that the spirit of love and the rule of 
expediency were the controlling principles. John 
Kuskin has spoken with great spiritual insight upon 
this question, and his words may be taken with very 
slight grains of salt. 

" The church is built upon the foundation of the 
apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the 
corner-stone. Well, we cannot have two founda- 
tions, so we can have no more apostles or prophets. 
Then, as for the other needs of the church in its 
edifying on this foundation, there are all manner of 
things to be done daily, — rebukes to be given ; com- 
fort to be brought; threatenings to be executed; 
charities to be ministered; and the men who do these 
things are called, and call themselves, with absolute 
indifference, deacons, bishops, elders, evangelists, 
according to what they are doing at the time of 
speaking. St. Paul almost always calls himself a 
deacon; Peter calls himself an elder (I. Pet. v. 1), 
and Timothy, generally understood to be addressed 
as a bishop, is called a deacon (I. Tim. iv. 6) — for- 
bidden to rebuke an elder (v. 1), and exhorted to do 
the work of an evangelist (II. Tim. iv. 5). But 
there is one thing which, as officers, or as separate 
from the rest of the flock, they never call them- 
selves, — which it would have been impossible, as so 
separate, they ever should have called themselves; 



334 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



that is — peiests. It would have been just as possi- 
ble for the clergy of the early Church to call them- 
selves Levites, as to call themselves ( ex officio ) 
priests. The whole function of priesthood was, on 
Christmas morning, at once and forever gathered 
into His Person who was born in Bethlehem; and 
thenceforward all who are united with Him, and who 
with Him make sacrifice of themselves, that is to say, 
all members of the invisible church become at the 
instant of their conversion, priests, and are so called 
in I. Pet. ii. 5 and Kev. i. 6 and xx. 6, where, ob- 
serve, there is no possibility of limiting the expres- 
sion to the clergy; the conditions of priesthood being 
simply having been loved by Christ, and washed in 
his blood. The blasphemous claim on the part of 
the clergy of being more priests than the godly laity 
— that is to say, of having a higher holiness than the 
holiness of being one with Christ, — is altogether a 
Romanist heresy, dragging after it, or having its 
origin in, the other heresies respecting the sacrificial 
power of the church officer, and his repeating the 
oblation of Christ, and so having power to absolve 
from sin; — with all the other endless and miserable 
falsehoods of the papal hierarchy; falsehoods for 
which, that there might be no shadow of excuse, it 
has been ordained by the Holy Spirit that no Chris- 
tian minister shall once call himself a priest from one 
end of the New Testament to the other, except 
together with his flock." — John Ruskin: Construc- 
tion of Sheep/olds. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



335 



2. 44 It is not reason (pleasing) that we should 
leave the word of God to serve tables." The move- 
ment for the appointment of the deacons is not 
placed on the basis of law, or precedent, or revela- 
tion even, but of what is pleasing (the Greek word 
means that); proper, we may say; expedient, is 
Paul's word. A division of labor was proper. It 
was not proper that the apostles should become dea- 
cons of tables, but that they should, praying contin- 
ually, be deacons of the Word. The mechanism of 
this church was ruled by prayer and love; it was 
therefore flexible, and therefore adaptable to emer- 
gencies, and therefore capable of continued enlarge- 
ment in continued unity. Dogmatism and legalism 
and unloveliness at this point would have divided 
the church. 

Side by side with the care of the apostles for the 
preaching of the Word was their care for neglected 
widows. Could the Apostle James have had this 
early experience in mind when he defined e< pure 
religion and undefiled? " 

7. "A great company of the priests became obedi- 
ent to the faith." " No fact recorded by Luke shows 
so strikingly the effect of the Gospel upon the popu- 
lar mind in Jerusalem."— Prof. J. W. McGarvey. 

With the increase of influence came intensity of 
opposition. Here begins the record of the persecu- 
tion and martyrdom of Stephen. (See Essay IV.) 



336 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



CHAPTER VII. 

1. " Then said the high priest, Are these things 
so? " For a moment the Sanhedrin seemed over- 
awed by that transfigured face of which Augustine 
has written as though himself enraptured by it: " O 
lamb, foremost of the flock of Christ, fighting in the 
midst of wolves, following after the Lord, but still at 
a distance from him, and already the angel's friend! 
Yes, how clearly was he the angel's friend, who, 
while in the very midst of wolves, still seemed like an 
angel ; for so transfigured was he by the rays of the 
sun of Righteousness, that even to his enemies he 
seemed a being not of this world." 

The evidential value of the speech called forth by 
this question has been noticed and emphasized by 
Meyer. "This speech bears in its contents and tone 
the impress of its being original. For the long and 
somewhat prolix historical narrative (vv. 2-47), in 
which the rhetorical character remains so much in the 
background, and even the apologetic element is dis- 
cernible throughout only indirectly, cannot — so pecu- 
liar and apparently irrelevant to the situation is much 
of its contents — be merely put into the mouth of 
Stephen, but must in its characteristic nature and 
course have come from his own mouth. If it were 
sketched after mere tradition or acquired informa- 
tion, or from a quite independent ideal point of view, 
then either the historical part would be placed in 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



337 



more direct relation to the points of the charge and 
brought into rhetorical relief, or the whole plan 
would shape itself otherwise in keeping with the ques- 
tion put in verse 1 ; the striking power and boldness 
of the speech, which only break forth in the smallest 
portion (vv. 48-53), would be more diffused over the 
whole, and the historical mistakes — which have noth- 
ing surprising in them in the case of a discourse 
delivered on the spur of the moment— would hardly 
occur." 

The same commentator censures Bruno Bauer for 
having gone "to the extreme of frivolous criticism" 
in rejecting the speech as fabricated, and the circum- 
stances of it, and even the death of Stephen. He 
supposes it to have been committed to writing imme- 
diately after its delivery by an earnest ear-witness, 
and copies of it to have been circulated, from one of 
which Luke made his report. 

2. Stephen locates the call of Abraham in Meso- 
potamia. Gen. xii. 1 locates it in Haran. (See also 
Gen. xi. 31). Most commentators suppose that Ste- 
phen refers to an earlier call barely hinted at in Gen. 
xv. 7. Meyer contents himself with saying that in the 
haste of his extemporized speech Stephen made a 
mistake. 

6. "Four hundred years." The speaker puts a 
round number for the exact one, which is four hun- 
dred and thirty (Ex. xii. 40; Gal. iii. 17). 

"This period of four hundred years is taken by 
Stephen from Gen. xv. 13, and is the time during 

22 , 



338 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



which the seed of Abraham sojourned, not including 
the period of his own sojourning before the birth of 
Isaac."— Prof. J. W. McGarvey. "The period of 
four hundred and thirty years embraces the time from 
Abraham's immigration into Canaan until the de- 
parture out of Egypt." — Haehett. 

16. Meyer's bold solution of the difficulties in this 
verse, as in verse 2, is that Stephen made mistakes 
respecting Abraham's purchase and the burial place 
of Jacob. Jacob, not Abraham, bought the ground 
of Sychem, and Joseph, not Jacob, was buried there, 
whereas Jacob was buried in the cave of Machpelah, 
which Abraham bought of Ephron the Hittite. The 
American editor of Meyer's commentary says, in 
attempted explanation of the difficulties of verse 16, 
"The following reading has been suggested, which 
requires only that an ellipsis be supplied : * And were 
carried into Sychem, and were laid, some of them, 
Jacob at least, in the sepulcher that Abraham bought 
for a sum of money; and others of them in that 
bought of the sons of Emmor, the father of Sychem.' 
The sketch is drawn with great brevity, and the facts 
greatly compressed, doubtless clearly apprehended 
by those to whom they were stated, though not easy 
to disentangle and arrange now." 

Other commentators seek to amend the text, and 
write Jacob instead of Abraham in verse 16. It is a 
troublesome verse. 

31. "The voice of the Lord." "It will be seen 
that the angel of Jehovah (verse 30; Ex. iii. 2) is 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



339 



here represented as Jehovah himself. Examples of a 
similar transition from one name to the other often 
occur in the Old Testament. It has been argued 
from this usage, as well as on other ground, that the 
Revealer under the ancient dispensation was identical 
with the Eevealer or Logos under the New Dispensa- 
tion." — Hackett. 

Too much, however, should not be built upon such 
literary expedients. An angel from God, speaking 
for God, might very naturally personate God. 

37-40. In these verses the direct aim of Stephen's 
speech becomes apparent. (Cf. 51). 

42. "Then God turned and gave them up to wor- 
ship the host of heaven." God gave them up to 
star- worship. " By way of punishment for that bull- 
worship, according to the idea of sin being punished 
by sin. The assertion, often repeated since the time 
of Chrysostom and Theophylact, that only the divine 
permission or withdrawal of grace is here denoted, is 
at variance with the positive expression and true 
Biblical conception of the divine retribution." — 
Meyer. 

43. "Moloch." According to Jewish tradition, 
from what source we know not, the image of Moloch 
was of brass, hollow within, and was situated without 
Jerusalem. Kimchi (on II. Kings xxiii. 10) describes 
it as set within seven chapels, and whoso offered to 
him fine flour, they open to him one of them; whoso, 
turtle doves or young pigeons, they open to him two; 
a lamb, they open to him three; a ram, four; a calf, 



340 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



five; an ox, six; and to whosoever offered his son, 
they opened to him seven. And his face was that of 
a calf, and his hands stretched forth like a man who 
opens his hands to receive something of his neighbor. 
And they kindled it with fire, and the priests took 
the babe and put it into the hands of Moloch, and 
the babe gave up the ghost. And why was it called 
Tophet or Hinnom? Because they used to make a 
noise with drums (tophim) that the father might not 
hear the cry of the child and have pity upon him and 
return to him. Hinnom, because the babe wailed, 
and the noise of his wailing went up." — M'Clintock 
and Strong. 

Kurtz, in speaking of the anticipations of religious 
truth, "many of which are little better than carica- 
ture," in pagan systems, says, "To this class belongs 
the offering of human victims which has been prac- 
ticed in all religions of nature without exception, — 
a terrible, and to some extent prophetic cry of agony 
from God-forsaken man, which is first toned down 
on Golgotha to hymns of joy and thanksgiving." 

The Israelites seemed prone to these " religions of 
nature," and they did not hesitate at the awful ex- 
treme of human sacrifice (II. Kings xxiii. 10; Jer. 
vii. 31; xix. 5). This throws a side-light upon the 
rigid prohibition of idolatry, and of intermarriage 
with idolaters in the Mosaic Law (Ex. xxxiv. 15, 16). 

55. "He beheld Jesus as he raised himself up 
from God's throne of light, and stands ready for the 
saving reception of the martyr. The prophetic basis 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



341 



of this vision in the soul of Stephen is Dan. vii. 13." 
— Meyer. 

This author also censures certain critics who think 
that Stephen only gave expression to "his firm con- 
viction of the glory of Christ and of his own impend- 
ing admission into heaven," or that "he had seen a 
dazzling cloud as the symbol of the presence of 
God," saying, "They convert his utterance at this 
lofty moment into a flourish of rhetoric." 

CHAPTER VIII. 

lo "At that time there was a great persecution 
against the church that was at Jerusalem. And they 
were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of 
Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles." 

Here begins a new movement in the church. This 
persecution was attended with historic consequences. 
Chapters viii. and ix., or, as Prof. J. M. Stiller 
prefers to state it, chapters vi. to ix. inclusive, 
form a section of the book, of which he writes as 
follows: "Pentecost is five or six years in the past, 
and the Risen Christ has not jet been preached out 
of the sight of Herod's temple. The disciples had 
been left here long enough to test whether Israel 
would repent and secure the promise spoken by 
Peter, ' That he may send the Christ who has been 
appointed for you, even Jesus.' . . . Long as the 
church had now existed, and multiplied in numbers 
as it was, not a single Gentile had been invited to 



342 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



cross its threshold. The door is about to be opened 
to them. The next few months will witness a revolu- 
tion more significant than any seen before or since. 
History was never made so fast. The barriers of the 
ages are to be broken down, and the God of the Jews 
is to be accepted by the nations. Our section gives 
an account of the first long stride in this direction. 
It tells of the opposition aroused by Stephen, gives 
his speech before the council, his death, and the 
dreadful persecution that followed the same day and 
scattered the church; the conversion of the half 
heathen Samaritans and the Ethiopian prince, and 
finally the miraculous calling and cleansing of an- 
other man for the apostolate. If the church's work 
was to be broadened, there must be more laborers, 
and laborers of broader views. We get them in 
Stephen, Philip and Saul. The settlement of the 
trouble about the daily ministration of the poor fund 
was the entering wedge to the new movement. That 
settlement certainly brought the Hellenistic Jews to 
the front. The names of the seven are all Greek. 
The last one in the list is a Jew by religion, but not 
by blood — 4 a proselyte of Antioch.' This little note 
is rich in meaning. We find Stephen, as soon as he 
entered upon his office, preaching in the Hellenistic 
synagogues. Plainly these foreign Jews with their 
more liberal thoughts had been suppressed. There 
must have been strong feeling, or why were their 
widows neglected while the home-born, Jewish wid- 
ows were regularly fed? How could these foreign 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



343 



Jews, with their hearts full of God's love, forget 
their brethren in distant countries through the 
Koman Empire? If they had not acted as yet they 
must have thought much. And seven of them hav- 
ing been put into the front now, God soon gave them 
an opportunity for more extended work. They set 
out with a few loaves to feed their widows. It was 
not long till they had to feed the world with the 
bread of life." 

2. "Devout men." "Not Christians, but Jews 
who, in their pious conscientiousness, and with a 
secret inclination to Christianity, had the courage to 
honor the innocence of him who had been stoned." — 
Meyer. 

4. ' ' They that were scattered abroad went every- 
where preaching the word." "In the case of those 
dispersed, and even in that of Philip, preaching was 
not tied to an existing special office. With their 
preaching probably there was at once practically 
given the new ministry, that of the evangelists 
(xxi. 8; Eph. iv. 11), as circumstances required, 
under the guidance of the Spirit." — Meyer. 

5-25. "The history of the evangelization of 
Samaria." 

It is attended with three noteworthy circum- 
stances: The ready belief of the Samaritans, and 
their baptism, "both men and women" (12), the 
false conversion of Simon the sorcerer, and the com- 
ing of Peter and John from Jerusalem, in answer to 



344 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



whose prayers the Holy Spirit was given to the be- 
lieving Samaritans. 

This Simon "has been stigmatized by the tradi- 
tions of the church fathers as the patriarch of all 
heretics, especially of the heathen Gnostics. . . . 
The opinion of the Samaritans regarding him, which 
was no doubt the mere echo of his own boastful 
declaration, that he was 'the great power of God,' 
itself suggests the Gnostic seons and emanations, 
those singular caricatures of the mystery of the incar- 
nation. According to the statement of Irenseus, 
Simon gave himself out as the supreme power, and 
blasphemously boasted that he appeared among the 
Samaritans as Father, among the Jews as Son, and 
among other nations as Holy Spirit." — 8 chaff. 

18. "The motive of his proposal was selfishness 
in the interests of his magical trade; very naturally 
he valued the communication of the Spirit, to the 
inward experiences of which he was a stranger, only 
according to the surprising outward phenomena, and 
hence saw in the apostles the possessors of a higher 
magical power still unknown to himself, the posses- 
sion of which he as a sorcerer coveted." — Meyer. 

"The sorcery which Simon and men like him used 
was probably no more than a greater knowledge of 
some of the facts of chemistry by which they at first 
attracted attention, and then traded on the credulity 
of those who came to consult them. From the time 
of their sojourn in Egypt the Jews had known of 
such impostors, and in their traditional literature 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



345 



some of the 'wisdom' of Moses partakes of this 
character." — Cambridge Bible for Schools and Col- 
leges. 

This man could not get above the mammonistic 
basis of life, Sorcery was with him a lucrative busi- 
ness. He was baptized from a business standpoint. 
With an eye to business he wondered at the miracles 
and signs wrought by Philip (13). He tried to drive 
a shrewd bargain with Peter, offering him money for 
the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the gift of imparting 
the Spirit, as another trick in his trade. His shal- 
lowness, his blasphemy, and his mammonism have 
their merited rebuke from the Apostle Peter (20), to 
whom in his genuineness they were utterly repug- 
nant. 

26-40. The conversion of the Ethiopian officer 
is a typical one in every respect. It is carefully 
detailed. There is the preaching of the Gospel by 
Philip. There is reception of it, and confession of it 
by the eunuch; there is the baptism, and the subse- 
quent rejoicing. 

37. " This verse is wanting in the best authorities. 
The most reliable manuscripts and versions testify 
against it. The few copies that contain the words 
read them . variously. Meyer suggests that they may 
have been taken from some baptismal liturgy, and 
added here that it might not appear that the eunuch 
was baptized without the evidence of his faith." — 
Hackett. 



346 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



"It is nothing else than an old addition for the 
sake of completeness." — Meyer, 

"This verse has been used chiefly for the purpose 
of determining the confession which was made origin- 
ally by candidates for immersion. The fact that it is 
an interpolation must modify the argument on this 
subject, but cannot invalidate it. The fact that such 
a confession as is here put into the mouth of the 
eunuch was uniformly required by the apostles is 
evident from other passages of Scripture. It is quite 
certain that it was confessed by Timothy. Paul says 
to him (I. Tim. vi. 13), 'Fight the good fight of 
faith; lay hold on eternal life, unto which you were 
called, and did confess the good confession before 
many witnesses.' This confession was made at the 
beginning of his religious career; for it is connected 
with his call to eternal life. It is the same confes- 
sion which is attributed to the eunuch, for Paul 
immediately adds: 'I charge thee before Grod, who 
gives life to all things, and Jesus Christ, who bore 
witness under Pontius Pilate, to the good confession/ 
etc. Now, what is here called the good confession, 
is certainly the confession that he was the Christ, 
made before the Sanhedrin under Pontius Pilate. 
But this is identified, by the terms employed, with 
the confession that Timothy made, which is also the 
good confession." — Prof. J. W. McGarvey. 

"Certainly in the 'preached unto him Jesus ' (36) 
there was comprehended also instruction concerning 
baptism . ' ' — Meyer. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



347 



Hackett enumerates three places on the ancient 
roads from Jerusalem to Gaza where there was suffi- 
cient water for an immersion. 

CHAPTER IX. 

1-22. "It is impossible to exaggerate the impor- 
tance of St. Paul's conversion as one of the evidences 
of Christianity. That he should have passed by one 
flight of conviction not only from darkness to light, 
but from one direction of life to the very opposite, 
is not only characteristic of the man, but evidential 
of the power and significance of Christianity. That 
the same man who just before was persecuting Chris- 
tianity with the most violent hatred, should come all 
at once to believe in him whose followers he had 
been seeking to destroy, and that in this faith he 
should become 4 a new creature ' — what is this but a 
victory which Christianity owed to nothing but the 
spell of its own inherent power?" — Farrar. 

Various theories have been resorted to by the 
hyper-higher critics to rid themselves of the miracle 
of conversion recorded in these verses, and affirmed 
and reaffirmed by the apostle himself in chapters 
xxii. and xxvi. In attempted explanation of the 
vision on the way to Damascus they hesitate between 
a sunstroke and a thunderstorm! Sunstrokes and 
thunderbolts do not usually produce such characters 
as that of Paul the apostle. 



348 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



44 Saul of Tarsus has refused to melt away in the 
crucible of these critical fires. This man, whatever 
may be said of the other apostles and of the great 
body of primitive Christians, had all the training and 
tastes of a scholar. He was endowed with the high- 
est intellectual gifts, and his conversion proved the 
turning point in the history of Christianity." — 
Be /trends. 

Bauer, at one time the leading pantheistic, ration- 
alistic critic of Germany, confessed just before his 
death in 1860, that 44 No psychological or dialectical 
analysis can explore the inner mystery of the act in 
which God revealed his Son in Paul," and that, 44 in 
the sudden transformation of Paul from the most 
violent adversary of Christianity into its most deter- 
mined herald," he could see 44 nothing short of a 
miracle." Mr. Behrends adds, 44 The confession is 
fatal to the theory of the great critic. The conver- 
sion of Paul is an inexplicable event on any theory 
that denies the supernatural in Christianity, and that 
discredits the historical credibility of the Gospels." 

44 Next to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the 
descent of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel history has no 
testimony which equals that of Saul of Tarsus. It 
has been felt in all ages ; and many a reflective mind, 
hitherto unmoved, has yielded to the power of this 
page of the Gospel." — Monod. 

10-12. 44 The course of the conversion, guided by 
Christ directly revealing himself, is entirely in 
accordance with its commencement (3-9). 4 But we 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



349 



know not the law according to which communications 
of a higher spiritual world to men living in the world 
of sense take place, so as to be able to determine 
anything concerning them.'" — Meyer. 

31. "Then had the churches rest throughout all 
Judsea, and Galilee, and Samaria." The first storm 
of persecution had passed by, and out of it there 
came missions to these regions, and churches in all 
of them. Not the least of its fruits was the conver- 
sion of Saul. In the calmness that followed the 
wrath of man was revealed in the light of the praise 
of God. 

32-43. The previous parts of this chapter are 
devoted to an account of the conversion of Saul; 
these last verses of it, to a missionary journey of 
Peter through the towns and cities of Sharon. In 
this portion of Acts Peter and Saul are the leading 
characters. It would seem that after the conversion 
of Cornelius (Ch. x.) the author hastens to be 
done with Peter that he may bestow all his attention 
on Paul. Even this missionary journey is dispatched 
with great haste. We would gladly know more 
about it. 

In this chapter Saul and Peter are first brought 
face to face, as may be seen by bringing Gal. i. 18 
into proper reference to verses 26 and 27. "Kindred 
in spirit, though differing much in social culture and 
mental training, the high-born, philosophic pupil of 
Gamaliel, and the humble, illiterate boatman of Gal- 
ilee, formed, even during the brief intercourse of two 



350 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



weeks, an ardent, life-long friendship. Little did 
either of them at the time imagine the grandeur of 
the work in which they were engaged, or the great 
things they both were to do and to suffer for the sake 
of Him they sought to serve and honor. Still less 
did they suppose that their humble names would be 
inscribed in the heraldry of deathless fame, while the 
great men of their day, princes, philosophers, and 
priests, would be remembered chiefly because of 
them and their works. Scarcely had the names of 
Caligula, and Gamaliel, and Annas been known 
to-day but for their connection with these two hum- 
ble great men and their mission." 

CHAPTER X. 

See Essay V. 

10-16. Schaff has spoken very suggestively, though 
perhaps too minutely, upon this vision as follows : 

"The symbolical import of this vision we can 
easily conjecture. The vessel denotes the creation, 
especially mankind; the letting down of it from 
heaven, the descent of all creatures from the same 
divine origin; the four corners are the four quarters 
of the globe; the clean and unclean beasts represent 
Jews and Gentiles, and the command to eat contains 
the divine declaration that the new creation in Christ 
has henceforth annulled the Mosaic laws respecting 
food (Lev. x. 10), as well as the distinction between 
clean and unclean nations; and that even the hea- 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



351 



then, therefore, were to be received into the Chris- 
tian church without the intervention of Judaism, as 
the cloth with all the animals was taken up again 
into heaven." 

" The object aimed at in the whole vision was the 
symbolical divine announcement that the hitherto 
subsisting distinction between clean and unclean 
men, that hedge between Jews and Gentiles, was to 
cease in Christianity as being destined for all men 
without distinction of nation." — Meyer. 

30-32. "The communication on the part of the 
angel (4-7) is understood as a divine answer to the 
constant prayer of Cornelius (2)." — Meyer. 

34, 35. "It is well known that the introductory 
words in the discourse of Peter have often been so 
interpreted as to teach that all religions are of equal 
value; that faith, as contradistinguished from mo- 
rality, is not indispensable; and that, with reference 
to the salvation of the soul, all that is specifically 
Christian is of no importance. But the attempt to 
find a palliation of indifference in the subject of 
religion in this passage betrays, as even DeWette 
judges, very great exegetical frivolity. Both the 
words themselves, and also the whole connection of 
the discourse, as well as of the narrative of which 
they form a part, decidedly pronounce against any 
such interpretation." — Lechler, as quoted by the 
American Editor of Meyer's Commentary on Acts. 

47, 48. " Can any one then withhold the water, in 
order that these be not baptized? The water in this 



352 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



animated language is conceived as the element offer- 
ing itself for the baptism. So urgent now appeared 
the necessity for completing on the human side the 
divine work that had miraculously emerged." — 
Meyer. 

"Though the gift of the Spirit has been made so 
apparent, yet Peter does not omit the outward sign 
which Christ had ordained (Matt, xxviii. 19) for the 
admission of members into his church." — Cambridge 
Bible for Schools and Colleges. 

"Who have received the Holy Spirit as well as 
we." Chrysostom calls this event the great apology 
that God had arranged beforehand for Peter. 

"The communication of the Spirit, and conse- 
quently regeneration, in this case before baptism, 
is striking and without parallel in the New Testa- 
ment. In all other cases the gift of the Spirit 
accompanied or followed baptism and the laying on 
of hands. Man is bound by the ordinances of God, 
but not God himself; he can anticipate them with his 
spiritual gifts. This exception to the general rule 
was undoubtedly ordered, though not for the benefit 
of Peter himself, yet for that of his Jewish com- 
panions; and was intended to give them — and through 
them the whole Jewish Christian party in Jerusa- 
lem, who could conceive of no baptism with the 
Spirit without the baptism with water, — incontesta- 
ble proof of the participation of the Gentiles in 
the kingdom of Christ, and to free them from their 
narrow, legalistic views. The apostle, however, even 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



353 



in this case, bore the strongest testimony to the 
importance of baptism with water, by causing this 
sacrament still to be administered as an objective 
divine seal and pledge of the gifts of grace."— 
S chaff. 

CHAPTER XI. 
See Essays V. and VI. 

1-18. These verses are a continuation of the mat- 
ter treated in chapter x. The chaptering is unfor- 
tunate. Peter is called to account by those in Jeru- 
lem " who were of the circumcision " for eating with 
Gentiles (verse 3). These Judaizers were zealous 
not alone for the law of Moses, but for traditions 
that had been magnified into laws. In the Penta- 
teuch there is no express prohibition of such fellow-' 
ship as Peter had indulged in with the Geutile 
Cornelius. But Maimonides recalls a traditional law 
that runs as follows: "It is forbidden to a Jew to 
be alone with heathens, because they are suspected 
of lightly shedding blood, nor must he associate with 
them on the road." 

The following is an interesting example of the 
sort of ceremonial uncleanness that might spring 
from association with Gentiles. 

"It happened that Shimeon the son of Kimkhith 
(who was high priest) went out to speak with the 
king of the Arabians, and there came a fleck of 
spittle from the king's mouth upon the priest's gar- 



354 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



ment, and so he was unclean; and his brother Judah 
went in and served instead of him in the high 
priest's office. That day their mother saw two of 
her sons high priests." 

20. "Spake unto the Grecians." So in the 
Authorized Version. In the Revised, "Greeks." 
"The New Testament uses Hellenist 'oe — Grecians, to 
mean those Jews who had been born abroad and 
spoke the Greek language, or else for proselytes, but 
Hellenes-— Greeks, when the heathen population was 
spoken of. Now it is clear that it would have been 
no matter of remark had these men preached to 
Greek Jews, for of them there was a large number in 
the church in Jerusalem, as we see from the events 
narrated in chapter vi. 1, and most probably these 
Grecian and Cyprian teachers were Greek Jews; but 
what calls for special mention by St. Luke is that 
they, moved perhaps by some spiritual impulse, ad- 
dressed their preaching in Antioch to the Gentiles as 
well as the Jews." — Cambridge Bible for Schools 
and Colleges. With this Meyer and Hackett agree. 

"Christianity touched the mind and heart of the 
centurion. Let him represent Roman strength, 
sternness, law, force, dignity. Christianity touched 
the Greek mind. Let that stand for refinement, ele- 
gance, delicacy, philosophy, for the completing line 
of human thought and service. There you have the 
whole circle. Christianity becomes Roman to the 
Roman, Grecian to the Grecian — a great rock to a 
rocky man, a rainbow to the dreaming genius, a sum- 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



355 



mer light to the poet's fancy. Christianity speaks to 
every man in the tongue wherein he was born. Chris- 
tianity says. You cannot learn my language, but I can 
speak yours. Therefore, with the infinite stoop of 
divine and tender grace it comes down to the lowli- 
est and obscurest of men and utters its gracious 
Gospel. No other religion does this. Every other 
religion says, You must come to me; I will not take 
one step toward you. This religion, symbolized by 
the blessed cross, comes out toward every man to seek 
and to save. In such circumstances such beneficence 
is argument." — Joseph Parker. 

26. "By Christians I understand Christ's follow- 
ers, Christ lovers, Christ worshipers, Christ ones. It 
is a thousand pities, in one aggravation of distress, 
that such a name should have been debased, com- 
mercialized, and made the password to unworthy 
confidence and honor. Were we what we ought to 
be in integrity, in simplicity, in equity of soul, there 
should be no nobler designation known amongst men, 
and no other should be needed. Koman Catholics, 
Protestants, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Pres- 
byterians — what are they, and how have they come to 
have any existence at all, and especially any honor as 
names? Did Christ ever see them? The one name 
that we ought to have is Christian, meaning by that 
the man who takes Jesus Christ as his Lord, Savior, 
Priest, Pattern, Inspiration. Could we restore that 
definition of the now perverted term, no name known 
under heaven amongst men could be such a warranty 



356 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



of conduct and such a seal of dignity." — Joseph 
Parker. 

Farrar says of the name Christian: "It was be- 
stowed as a stigma, and accepted as a distinction. 
They who afterwards gloried in the contemptuous 
reproaches that branded them sarmenticii and sem- 
axii, from the fagots to which they were tied and the 
stakes to which they were bound, would not be likely 
to blush at a name which was indeed their robe of 
victory, their triumphal chariot. They gloried in it 
all the more because even the ignorant mispronuncia- 
tions of it were a happy nomen and omen. If the 
Greeks and Romans spoke correctly of Christus, they 
gave unwilling testimony to the universal king; if 
they ignorantly said Chrestus, they bore witness to the 
sinless One. If they said Christiani, they showed 
that the new faith centered not in a dogma, but in a 
person; if they said Chrestiani, they used a word 
which spoke of sweetness and kindness. And beyond 
all this, to the Christians themselves the name was all 
the dearer because it constantly reminded them that 
they, too, were God's anointed ones — a holy genera- 
tion, a royal priesthood; that they had an unction 
from the Holy One which brought all truth to their 
remembrance. " 

27. "In these days there came prophets from 
Jerusalem unto Antioch." 

" Inspired teachers, who delivered their discourses, 
not indeed in the ecstatic state, yet in exalted lan- 
guage, on the basis of a revelation received. Their 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



357 



working was entirely analogous to that of the Old 
Testament prophets. Revelation, incitement, and 
inspiration on the part of God gave them their quali- 
fication; the unveiling of what was hidden in respect 
of the divine counsel for the exercise of a psycho- 
logical and moral influence on given circumstances, 
but always in reference to Christ and his work, was 
the tenor of what these interpreters of God spoke. 
The prediction of what was future was, as with the 
old, so also with the new prophets, no permanent 
characteristic feature. But naturally and necessarily 
the divinely-illuminated glance ranged very often into 
the future development of the divine counsel and 
kingdom, and saw what was to come." — Meyer. 

28. " Throughout all the world." 

"History pointed out the limits within which what 
was seen and predicted without limitation found its 
fulfillment, inasmuch, namely, as this famine which 
set in in the fourth year of the reign of Claudius 
(A. D. 44) extended only to Judaea and the neighbor- 
ing countries, and particularly fell on Jerusalem 
itself, which was supported by the Syrian queen 
Helena of Adiabene with corn and figs." — Meyer. 

This passage is one of the important notes of time 
in the book. Claudius reigned from A. D. 41 to 54. 
Prof. Ramsay bases much on the time of the famine, 
and sums up his arguments as follows : 

"As thus interpreted, Luke's chronology harmon- 
izes admirably with Josephus. Agabus came to Anti- 
och in the winter of 43-44; and in the early part of 



358 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



44 Herod's persecution occurred, followed by his 
death, probably in the autumn. In 45 the harvest 
was probably not good, and provisions grew scarce in 
the country; then when the harvest of 46 failed, 
famine set in, and relief was urgently required, and 
was administered by Baruabas and Saul. It is an 
interesting coincidence that relief was given liberally 
in Jerusalem by Queen Helena (mother of Izates, 
king of Adiabene), who bought corn in Egypt and 
figs in Cyprus, and brought them to Jerusalem for 
distribution. She came to Jerusalem in 45, and her 
visit lasted through the season of famine; she had a 
palace in Jerusalem. The way in which she imparted 
relief to the starving people illustrates the work that 
Barnabas and Saul had to perform." 

30. It is noteworthy here that the elders are rep- 
resented as having charge of the charities of the 
church. 

CHAPTER XII. 

See Essay VII. 

1. 44 The accuracy of the sacred writer, says 
Paley, in the expressions which he uses here, is 
remarkable. There was no portion of time for thirty 
years before, or ever afterwards, in which there was a 
king at Jerusalem, a person exercising that authority 
in Judaea, or to whom that title could be applied, 
except the last three years of Herod's life, within 
which period the transaction herein recorded took 
place. " — Or mist on. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



359 



4. "Easter." This word is an anachronism. No 
such feast was known to the Christians. It should 
read, "Passover." 

5. "In the fifth verse there is a pitched battle. 
Read it: — Peter therefore was kept in prison; there 
is one side of the fight ; after the colon — but prayer 
was made without ceasing of the church unto God 
for him. Now for the shock of arms! Who wins? 
It is the battle of history. It is a field on which the 
universe gazes with conflicting feeling. Prayer 
always wins." — Joseph Parker. 

"If they had been taught the modern doctrine that 
Christians may rightly resist with violence the 
assaults of tyrannical rulers, and, whatever the weak- 
ness on their own part, may confidently appeal to the 
God of battles in vindication of their rights, their 
feelings and their conduct under these circumstances 
must have been far different from what they were. 
If ever there was an occasion on which the boasted 
first law of nature, the right of self-defense, would 
justify violent resistance to oppression, it existed 
here. But instead of the passion and turmoil of 
armed preparation, we hear from the midnight 
assemblies of the disciples the voice of fervent 
prayer. Where prayer is, acceptable prayer, there is 
no passion, no thirst for revenge, or purpose of 
violence. These men were disciples of the Prince of 
Peace."— Prof. J. W. McGarvey. 

17. "And he departed, and went into another 



360 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



place." "How often did Paul and Jesus himself 
withdraw .... into concealment! " — Meyer. 

"Catholic writers and some others hold that Peter 
proceeded to Rome at this time, and labored for the 
Jews there as the apostle of the circumcision (G-al. 
ii. 7; I. Pet. i. 1). If this be true, he must have 
then been the founder of the church in that city, or, 
at all events, have established a relation to it, per- 
sonal and official, stronger than that of any other 
teacher. It is entirely adverse to this view that Paul 
makes no allusion to Peter in his Epistle to the 
Romans, but writes with the tone of authority which 
his avowed policy, his spirit of independence 
(II. Cor. x. 16), would not have suffered him to 
employ had it belonged more properly to some other 
apostle to intrust and guide the Roman church. The 
best opinion from traditionary sources is that Peter 
arrived at Rome just before the outbreak of Nero's 
persecution, where he soon perished as a martyr." — 
Hackett. 

24. "But the word of God grew and multiplied." 
"A contrast — full of significance in its simplicity — 

to the tragical end of the persecutor." — Meyer, 

One of the many indications in the book of the 
rapid growth of the church (ch. vi. 7; viii. 25; 
ix. 31; xix. 20). 

25. "When they had fulfilled their ministry." A 
ministry of charity; ministration rather, for the 
word " ministry" has been narrowed. (Seexi. 29-30.) 
The original word for "ministry" here, and for 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



361 



" relief" in xi. 29, and for "ministration" in vi. 1, is 
the same. It is a form of the Greek word which we 
have anglicized as " deacon." Its best translation is 
"ministration." It is noteworthy that the Apostle 
Paul here performed distinctively the office of a 
deacon. (See quotation from Ruskin, ch. vi. 1.) It 
must have been an arduous work to purchase and 
transport goods for a famine stricken people, and it 
was no light task to distribute them properly among 
the thousands of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. 

CHAPTER XIII. 
See Essay Till. 

On the work of the Holy Spirit see Essay XIII. 

"The record of the first offer of the Gospel to the 
(Gentile) world begins after the return of Saul and 
Barnabas from their visit of benevolence to Jerusa- 
lem. They bring back with them John Mark. These 
three set out to bear the light to the heathen. 

" The church is at length prepared, after more than 
sixteen years, to begin formally and deliberately its 
work among the heathen. The Sanhedrin seems to 
have lost its power to hinder. The Jewish state will 
never again oppose. But more than all the Jewish 
caste has been broken, and its prejudice driven to the 
rear so that it will not soon stand in the way again. 
The new center of the Gospel influence has been 
founded in Antioch. The religious thought of the 
Jews under the power of the Spirit has found a new, 



362 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



a deeper, a broader channel. God is no longer the 
God of the Jews only. The world has put on a new 
face, because it has become the field of divine grace. 
This first regular work among the heathen was not 
very wide in its scope. It did not reach Rome. It 
did not reach Corinth, or even Ephesus. It extended 
but a few hundred miles beyond Paul's birthplace in 
Tarsus. In giving its history Luke shows how God 
promoted it from first to last, how it was carried on 
and how it was justified by the obstinacy of the Jews 
who were encountered in this first missionary jour- 
ney."— Prof. J. M. Stijler. 

1-3. "Thus the mother church of Gentile Chris- 
tianity has become the seminary of the mission to 
the Gentiles. ' ' — Meyer. 

2. "As they ministered unto the Lord." 

The original for this word "ministered" is used 
both in reference to religious service and the minis- 
tering of charities, or to service both Godward and 
manward, indicating that the two are very closely 
related (Heb. x. 11; Rom. xv. 27). The same is true 
of the noun (Luke i. 23; Phil. ii. 30). 

7. "Deputy." Strictly proconsul. 

"Under Augustus the Roman provinces were 
divided into two classes, one class of which (needing 
the presence of troops for their government, the pos- 
session of which gave the emperor the control of 
the army) was called imperatorial, while the others 
were called senatorial provinces. The former were 
governed by an officer called propraetor, the latter by 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



363 



a proconsul. We know from Dio Cassias that Cyprus 
was originally an imperatorial province, and there- 
fore under a propraetor. This also Strabo confirms, 
but says that Augustus made it over to the people 
along with part of Galatia, and took instead of these 
Dalmatia for one of his provinces. So that the gov- 
ernment was at Paul's visit held by a proconsul for 
the Roman Senate, as is here recorded. This is 
another instance of the historic faithfulness of 
Luke's record." — Cambridge Bible for Schools and 
Colleges. 

9. "Who is also called Paul." 

Prof. Ramsay's interesting paragraph on the Apos- 
tle Paul's change of name cannot be omitted here. 

"Nothing has hitherto transpired to show that 
Paul was anything but a Hebrew sprung from the 
Hebrews. In Cyprus he went through the country 
city by city, synagogue by synagogue; and he was the 
Jew in all. But here he is in different surroundings; 
he stands in the hall of the proconsul, and he answers 
the questions of the Roman official. The interview 
doubtless began, as all interviews in the country be- 
tween strangers still begin, with the round of ques- 
tions: 4 What is your name? (or who are you?) 
Whence come you? What is your business? ' . . . 
To these questions how would Saul answer? After 
his years of recent life as a Jew, filled with the 
thought of a religion that originated among the Jews, 
and was in his conception the perfected form of Jew- 
ish religion, did he reply: 'My name is Saul, and I 



364 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



am a Jew from Tarsus?' First let us see what he 
himself says as to his method of addressing an audi- 
ence (I. Cor. ix. 20f.), 'To the Jews I made myself a 
Jew that I might gain the Jews; to them that are 
under the law as under the law (though not myself 
under the law); to them that are without the law as 
without law; I am become all things to all men; and 
I do all for the Gospel's sake.' We cannot doubt 
that the man who wrote so to the Corinthians replied 
to the questions of Sergius Paulus, by designating 
himself as a Roman, born at Tarsus, and named Paul. 
By a marvelous stroke of historic brevity, the author 
sets before us the past and the present in the simple 
words: Then Saul, otherwise Paul, fixed his eyes on 
him, and said. 

"The double character, the mixed personality, the 
Oriental teacher who turns out to be a free-born 
Roman, would have struck and arrested the attention 
of any governor, any person possessed of insight into 
character, any one who had even an average share of 
curiosity. But to a man with the tastes of Sergius 
Paulus, the Roman Jew must have been doubly inter- 
esting; and the orator or the preacher knows how 
much is gained by arousing such an interest at the 
outset." 

12. "Then the deputy (proconsul) when he saw 
what was done believed." 

"He was convinced by the miracle and by the 
words with which it was accompanied, that the apos- 
tles were teachers of the way of the Lord, after 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



365 



which he had been seeking in vain from Elyinas. We 
are not told that Sergius was baptized, but we have 
other instances of like omission of notice (verse 48), 
yet as baptism was the appointed door into Christ's 
church, such omission of the mention thereof should 
not be thought to warrant us in believing that the 
sacrament was neglected on any occasion."— Gam- 
bridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. 

With this Meyer agrees, saying that "believed" 
" obviously supposes the reception of baptism." 

14. " But when they departed from Perga they 
came to Antioch in Pisidia." 

Prof. Ramsay connects this sudden departure from 
Perga and visit to Antioch with Paul's " infirmity in 
the flesh," referred to in Gal. iv. 13, 14. He thinks 
the "infirmity" was malarial fever in a distressing 
form, and that therefore Paul sought the moun- 
tainous regions of Pisidian Antioch. He also seeks 
to show that this disease was Paul's "thorn in the 
flesh" (II. Cor. xii. 7). His arguments are interest- 
ing, and well nigh convincing. 

20. "Gave unto them judges about the space 
of four hundred and fifty years, until Samuel the 
prophet." 

Paul here seems to follow the chronology of Jose- 
phus rather than that in I. Kings vi. 1, where the 
period from the Exodus to the building of the temple 
is given as 480 years. This, subtracting the 40 years 
in the wilderness, the 25 of Joshua, the 40 of 
Saul's reign, the 40 of David's, and the 4 of Solo- 



366 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



mon's up to the time of the beginning of the work, 
leaves only 331 as the period of the Judges. Jose- 
phus, however, gives the time from the exodus to the 
building of the temple as 592 years. Making the 
subtractions above from this we have left in round 
numbers the 450 vears of the text. (See Meyer and 
Hackett.) 

17-41. In Paul's sermon there appears, 1. Epit- 
ome of Israel's history from the sojourn in Egypt to 
David. 2. The genealogy of Jesus as starting from 
David. 3. The rejection of Jesus. 4. The resur- 
rection of Jesus. 5. Forgiveness through Jesus, 
and therefore justification by him. 6. A warning to 
despisers. 

The first part of this sermon follows the plan of 
Stephen (VII.); the latter part, that of Peter on 
Pentecost (II.). The place assigned to forgiveness 
by Paul is the same as that assigned to remission of 
sins by Peter. In Paul's mind forgiveness takes the 
form of justification. Here is the first intimation of 
his teaching on that subject. Here also he first 
intimates the insufficiency of the law of Moses, and it 
seems to have given no offense to his Jewish audi- 
tors, perhaps because these Jews were already lax 
legalists by reason of Grentile associations. 

48. "As many as were ordained (were disposed; 
Variorum Bible) to eternal life believed." 

"In the controversies on predestination and elec- 
tion this sentence has constantly been brought for- 
ward. But it is manifestly unfair to take a sentence 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



367 



out of its context, and interpret it as if it stood 
alone. In verse 46 we are told that the Jews had 
judged themselves unworthy of eternal life, and all 
that is meant by the words in this verse is the oppo- 
site of that expression. The Jews were acting so as 
to proclaim themselves unworthy; the Gentiles were 
making manifest their desire to be deemed worthy. 
The two sections were like opposing troops, ranged 
by themselves, and to some degree, though not unal- 
terably, looked upon as so ranged by God on differ- 
ent sides. Thus the Gentiles were ordering them- 
selves, and were ordered, unto eternal life. The text 
says no word to warrant us in thinking that none 
could henceforth change sides." — Cambridge Bible 
for Schools and Colleges. 

49. "And the word of the Lord was published 
through all the region." 

"Here we have a fact of (Eoman) administration 
and government assumed in quiet and undesigned 
fashion. Antioch was the center of a Region. This 
is the kind of allusion which affords to the students 
of ancient literature a test of accuracy, and often a 
presumption of date. I think that, if we put this 
presumption to the test, we shall find, (1) That it is 
right; (2) that it adds a new fact; (3) that it 
explains and throws new light on several passages in 
ancient authors and inscriptions." This note is from 
Prof. Ramsay, who goes more deeply into the sub- 
ject, and concludes as follows, referring to an in- 
scription found and published by Prof. Sterrett, of 



368 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



Amherst, Mass., which speaks of a "regionary cen- 
turion: 99 

"Thus we have epigraphic authority to prove that 
Antioch under the Roman administration was the 
center of a Region. Further, we can determine the 
extent and name of that Region, remembering always 
that in a province like Gralatia, where evidence is 
lamentably scanty, we must often be content with 
reasonable probability, and rarely find such an in- 
scription as Prof. Sterrett's, to put us on a plane of 
demonstrated certainty. . . . Thus without any 
formal statement, and without any technical term, 
but in the course of a bare, simple and brief account 
of the effects of Paul's preaching, we find ourselves 
unexpectedly (just as Paul and Barnabas found them- 
selves unintentionally) amid a Roman provincial dis- 
trict, which is moved from the center to the circum- 
ference by the new preaching. It is remarkable how 
the expression of Luke embodies the very soul of 
history." 

50. "The honorable women." 

"The influence attributed to women at Antioch is 
in perfect accord with the manners of the country. 
In Athens or in an Ionian city it would have been im- 
possibl e . " — Ramsay. 

51. "Shook off the dust of their feet." In ac- 
cordance with the instruction of Jesus (Matt. x. 14). 
It is not always necessary or possible that the victo- 
ries of truth should be immediate. Time is required 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



369 



for the effects of preaching. Paul and Barnabas 
withdrew only that they might revisit and confirm 
(xiv. 21, 22). 

CHAPTER XIV. 

5, 6. Observe that the apostles were not stoned in 
Iconium, though they were perilously near to it. 
Observe also that in Lystra (19, 20) Paul was stoned, 
this being the only occasion of stoning recorded 
in his case. In II. Cor. xi. 25, he says, "Once was I 
stoned." Paley, in his "Horse Paulinse," makes fine 
use of this agreement between Paul and Luke, espe- 
cially as they are so dangerously near to a disagree- 
ment. They are saved from contradiction by their 
mutual accuracy and truthfulness. 

8-10. "Observe the earnest circumstantiality of 
this narrative." — Meyer. 

11. "Lifted up their voices in the speech of 
Lycaonia." 

"The more surprised and astonished the people 
were, the more natural it was for them to express 
themselves in their native dialect." — Meyer. 

"The name Lycaonia, or Wolnand, indicates only 
too faithfully the character of the inhabitants. Few 
if any Jews were settled there, and we read of no 
synagogue in either of the towns named. The region 
is described as wild, rugged, mountainous; an almost 
Alpine country." "Lystra was the home of Timo- 
thy, and has a post-apostolic history, the names o2 

24 



370 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



its bishops appearing in the records of early coun- 
cils." 

"The gods are come down to us in the likeness of 
men." 

"It was a general belief, long after the Homeric 
age, that the gods visited the earth in the form of 
men. Such a belief with regard to Jupiter would be 
natural in such an inland, rural district as Lystra, 
which seems to have been under his special protec- 
tion, as his image or temple stood in front of the city 
gates. And as Mercury was the messenger and her- 
ald of the gods, especially of Jupiter, it was natural 
that he should be associated with him. He was also 
the god of eloquence; and as Paul was the chief 
speaker, they took him for Mercury; and the more 
quiet, perhaps the more aged, venerable and majestic 
looking Barnabas, they regarded as Jupiter." — 
Ormiston. 

23. "And when they had ordained (chosen; 
elected; appointed; Variorum Bible) them elders in 
every church . . ." 

"There is indeed no point on which the most 
learned have been so much agreed as this, that the 
Greek word here simply denotes having selected, 
constituted, appointed. Alford says, The word will 
not bear the sense of laying on of hands, and adds, 
The apostles ordained the elders whom the churches 
elected. Gloag says the word has two meanings, to 
choose by election, or simply to choose. Meyer 
adopts the first of these meanings; Gloag decidedly 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



371 



prefers the second, so does also Hackett." — Ormis- 
ton. 

Elders are previously mentioned in xi. 30. (See 
Comment.) 

Gloag says the ministers of the church were called 
presbyters or elders with reference to the Jewish 
element in the church; and bishops or overseers 
with reference to the Greek element. 

CHAPTER XV. 

See Essay X. This is one of the most important 
chapters of the book. 

1. "Except ye be circumcised after the manner of 
Moses ye cannot be saved." From the standpoint of 
the old law circumcision was not a trifle; but from 
the standpoint of the "grace and truth" that came 
by Jesus Christ it was a trifle, and worse if men 
trusted in it as meritorious to the detriment of spir- 
itual life. It is amazing what trifles Christians con- 
tend about! Early in the eighteenth century a 
congregation in the west of Scotland "differed on 
the paltry question whether it was necessary for the 
minister to lift in his hand the plate of bread before 
its distribution in the Lord's Supper, the Lifters 
holding this to be essential, the others regarding it as 
a matter of no moment." They became known as 
the Lifters and the Anti-Lifters \—M' Clintock and 
Strong: Biblical and Theological Cyclopaedia. 

23. "A singular feature in James' resolution is 



372 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



that it includes one positive sin with matters that are 
in themselves indifferent. He forbids a moral breach 
along with others that are only ceremonial. But the 
solution is easy. The Greeks did not look upon 
fornication with the Jews' abhorrence. The sin was 
so common among the heathen that they had lost all 
conscience about it, and in the prohibition now laid 
upon them they would not feel any theological diffi- 
culty." — Stifle i\ 

36-39. For the dissension between Paul and Bar- 
nabas, see Essay VIII., pp. 161 and 162. 

40. ''Paul chose Silas." Silas was one of the 
chosen men of the Jerusalem church (vv. 25-27). In 
Paul's Epistles and in I. Pet. v. 12 he is called Silva- 
nus. In choosing such a member and representative 
of the Jerusalem church to accompany him in his 
labors among Gentile churches, Paul shows his anx- 
iety and foresight, for this was among his plans 
to further the confidence, and thereby preserve the 
unity between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. 

41. "And he went through Syria and Cilicia con- 
firming the churches." 

According to Prof. Ramsay, Syria and Cilicia was 
a Roman Region lying in Syria and not extending 
into Asia Minor. That there were churches in this 
Region is proof of missionary work of which we 
have no record, probably Paul's. (See page 367.) 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



373 



CHAPTER XVI. 

See Essay XI. In this essay a reasonably full 
treatment of the principal matters presented in this 
and the two immediately succeeding chapters is 
attempted. 

3. The circumcision of Timothy was not de- 
manded by Judaizers, as in the case of Titus (Gal. ii. 
3, 4), but was a concession on the part of Paul. In 
this concession no principle was at stake. Besides, 
Timothy, according to the Rabbinical law, would be 
considered a Jew because his mother was a Jewess. 
The decision of the council in Jerusalem (xv. 29) 
gave no permission to Jewish Christians to neglect 
the rite of circumcision. This was a point not 
touched upon, and the apostle Paul's concession in 
the case of Timothy would serve to emphasize his 
demand for liberty in the case of the Gentiles. 

12. " A. colony." 44 It should be borne in mind 
that a Roman colony was not like what we now call a 
colony. The inhabitants did not settle as they 
pleased, but were sent out by authority from Rome, 
marching to their destination like an army with 
banners, and they reproduced, where they settled, a 
close resemblance to Roman rule and life. They 
were planted on the frontiers of the empire for pro- 
tection, and as a check upon the provincial magis- 
trates. The names of those who went were still 
enrolled in the lists of the tribes of Rome. Latin 
was their language, and they used the Roman coinage 



374 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



and had their chief magistrate sent out or appointed 
by the mother city. Thus they were very closely 
united with Kome, and were entirely free from any 
intrusion on the part of the governors of the prov- 
inces." — Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. 

13. "Spake unto the women which resorted 
thither." 

" Considering the little regard which the Jews had 
for the women to be conversed with and taught, it 
is noteworthy how large a part women play both in 
the Gospel history and in the Acts. It was one 
effect of Christianity to place woman in her true 
position/' — Cambridge Bible for Schools and Col- 
leges. 

15. 44 And her household." 

"Of a like baptizing of a household see below (v. 
33), and also x. 48. We are not justified in conclud- 
ing from these passages that infants were baptized. 
4 Household ' might mean slaves and freedwomen." — 
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. 

44 If in the Jewish and Gentile families that were 
converted to Christ there were children, their bap- 
tism is to be assumed in those cases when they were 
so far advanced that they could and did confess their 
faith in Jesus as the Messiah; for this was the uni- 
versal, absolutely necessary qualification for the re- 
ception of baptism." — Meyer. 

44 Here," says De Wette, 44 as well as in verse 33; 
xviii. 8; I. Cor. i. 16, some would find a proof of the 
apostolic baptism of children; but there is nothing 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



375 



here which shows that any except adults were bap- 
tized." — Quoted by Hackett. 

With the above, Neander is in full agreement, as- 
suring us that not till so late as the time of Irenseus 
(last half of the second century), does there appear 
in the church a trace of infant baptism. 

The household of Stephanus, baptized by Paul in 
Corinth (I. Cor. i. 15), were all adults, as is shown 
by reference to I. Cor. xvi. 15. They " addicted 
themselves to the ministry of the saints." 

40. " Into the house of Lydia." 

" Waiting there probably till they were able to 
travel further. But in the midst of their suffering 
they still exhort and comfort the Christians whom in 
their stay they had gathered into a church. 
"How deep was the mutual affection which existed 
between St. Paul and these Philippians, his first 
European converts, is manifest in every line of the 
epistle he wrote to them from Rome in his first im- 
prisonment. They are his greatest joy; they have 
given him no cause for sorrow; and from first to last 
have ministered to his afflictions, and made manifest 
how they prized their ' father in Christ.' The 
jubilant language of the letter is marked by the oft- 
repeated ' Rejoice in the Lord."' 



376 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



CHAPTER XVII. 

See Essay XI. 

6. "The rulers of the city" (TroXirapxa?, — poli- 
tarchs). "The title ' politarchs ' is found nowhere 
in literature but in this chapter. But an inscription 
connected with this very city of Thessalonica has 
been preserved on an arch which spans a street of 
the modern city. It contains some names which 
occur as the names of St. Paul's converts, Sosipater, 
Gaius, Secundus, but the inscription is probably not 
earlier than the time of Vespasian. There the title 
of the magistrates is given in this precise form; a 
striking confirmation of the truthfulness of the 
account before us." — Cambridge Bible for Schools 
and Colleges. 

" The curious and rare title ' politarchs ' was given 
to the supreme board of magistrates at Thessalonica, 
as is proved by an inscription." — Ramsay. 

12. " Honorable women which were Greeks." 

" In Macedonia, as in Asia Minor, women occupied 
a much freer and more influential position than in 
Athens; and it is in conformity with the known facts 
that such prominence is assigned to them in the three 
Macedonian cities." — Ramsay. 

16. "Paul waited for them at Athens." 

Speaking in general of Paul's presence in Athens 
Prof. Eamsay says, "This extraordinary versatility in 
Paul's character, the unequaled freedom and ease 
with which he moved in every society, and addressed 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



377 



so many races in the Roman world, were evidently 
appreciated by the man who wrote this narrative, for 
the rest of Chapter xvii. is as different in tone from 
xiii. as Athens is different from Phrygia. Only a 
writer who was in perfect sympathy with his subject 
could adapt his tone to it so perfectly as Luke does. 
In Ephesus Paul taught ' in the school of Tyran- 
nus; ' in the city of Socrates he discussed moral 
questions in the market-place. How incongruous it 
would seem if the methods were transposed! But 
the narrative never makes a false step amid all the 
many details, as the scene changes from city to 
city; and that is the conclusive proof that it is the 
picture of real life." — Ramsay. 
23. "To the unknown god." 

Upon the authority of an ancient writer Meyer 
says, " Epimenides put an end to a plague in Athens 
by causing black and white sheep, which he had let 
loose on the Areopagus, to be sacrificed on spots 
where they lay down to the god concerned, yet not 
known by name, namely, who was the author of the 
plague; and that therefore one may find at Athens 
altars without the designation of the god by name." 
From this instance he derives an argument in favor 
of the presence in Athens of altars with the inscrip- 
tion "Unknown God." 

"Reverence for the Unknown and Nameless was 
the expression of the unsatisfied groping of poly- 
theism after the truth; its consciousness of its own 
insufficiency; its presentiment both of a higher 



378 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



power beyond the sphere of its gods, and of the 
necessity of having that power propitiated. Thus 
polytheism itself left room for a new religion, for the 
knowledge and worship of the unknown god, who is 
also the only true God. On this longing after truth 
Paul lays hold; and, referring that remarkable phe- 
nomenon to its ultimate principle; interpreting the 
religious want, which revealed itself therein; and in 
the presence of an unknown god, recognizing with 
perfect propriety the faint notion of the unknown 
God, he proceeds: Whom therefore ye ignorantly 
worship, him declare I unto you." — Schaff. 

28. "In him we live, and move, and have our 
being." 

This is not pantheism. It is the assertion of the 
immanence of God as vv. 24 and 25 are the assertion 
of the transcendence of God. Moreover this " divine 
descent" is predicated only of man, and in man there 
is the recognition of evil, both of which conceptions 
are averse to pantheism. So far from pantheism this 
is a common Hebrew conception (Psalm xc. 1), and 
the apostle brings Greek poetry to its confirmation 
with his Greek audience, namely, "We also are his 
offspring; " "the first half of a hexameter, verbatim 
from Aratus." 

34. "And a woman named Damaris." 

"One woman was converted at Athens; and it is 
not said that she was one of good birth, as was stated 
at Berea and Thessalonica and Pisidiau Antioch. 
The difference is true to life. It was impossible in 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



379 



Athenian society for a woman of respectable position 
and family to have any opportunity of hearing Paul ; 
and the name Damaris (probably a vulgarism for 
damalis, heifer) suggests a foreign woman, perhaps 
one of the class of educated Hetairai, who might very 
well be in his audience." — Ramsay. 

Prof. Ramsay thinks that Paul was disappointed 
and disillusioned in Athens; that when he went to 
Corinth he determined to abandon the philosophic 
style, and "know nothing but Christ and him cruci- 
fied" (I. Cor. ii. 2); and that nowhere was he so 
hard on the philosophers and dialecticians as when 
he defended the style of his preaching in Corinth. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Portions of Essay XI. will be found to bear on this 
chapter down to verse 22. 

2. An interesting point of contact with Roman 
history, and especially valuable from a chronological 
standpoint. See Preliminary Essay, page 18. 

8. See Comments on Ch. xvi. 15. 

18. "Having shorn his head in Cenchrea; for he 
had a vow." 

The construction of the sentence is such that it can 
never be known absolutely whether this refers to 
Paul or Aquila; it is commonly referred to Paul. 

24-28. The use of these verses by Paley in his 
"Horse Paulinas" affords us another interesting 
example of his method. In I. Cor. iii. 6, Paul says, 



380 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



"I have planted, Apollos watered." "Therefore 
Paul was in Corinth before Apollos, and Apollos was 
there before the writing of I. Corinthians." With 
these requirements the history found in these verses 
agrees precisely, and it is evidently undesigned. 
Many passages in the last chapters of Acts are thus 
used in the "Horse Paulinas" with great force. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

1-7. The rebaptism of these disciples of John is 
unique and interesting. If they were disciples of 
Apollos why did he leave them thus after he himself 
was better instructed? Surely Aquila and Priscilla 
could not have known them long. They must have 
been strangers who attached themselves to the Chris- 
tians upon a very slight knowledge of Christ. At all 
events, Paul completed an incomplete work, and in 
this respect the incident may be taken for a prece- 
dent. Some critics feel that it is an interruption to 
the narrative of Luke, and not perfectly in keeping 
with his style. Prof. Ramsay suggests that if we 
knew more of the history of the church in Ephesus, 
we might see more of the significance and import- 
ance of the episode in its development. 

8, 9. Here is the usual synagogue preaching; the 
usual persecution; the usual turning to the Gentiles. 

10. " So that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word 
of the Lord Jesus." 

" Asia." That is, Asia Minor, according to Meyer. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



381 



This 44 great and effectual door," explains the long 
stay of Paul in Ephesus. "It was but forty years 
after this that Pliny, in his celebrated letter to 
Trajan, says, even in reference to the more distant 
Bithynia. " ' Many of every age, of every rank, and 
also either sex, are brought, and will be brought into 
peril. For the contagion of this superstition has 
not only spread through the cities, but also through 
the villages and country places.' " — Hacketl. 

13-20. " In this narrative the powers of Paul are 
brought into competition with those of Jewish exor- 
cists and pagan dabblers in the black art, and his 
superiority to them is demonstrated. Ephesus was a 
center of such magical arts and practices, and it was 
therefore inevitable that the new teaching should be 
brought in contact with them and triumph over 
them. ' ' — Ramsay. 

These sons of Sceva are representatives of a class. 
Many Asiatic Jews had become lax and degenerate, 
and even the office of the priesthood did not deter 
them from such a vagabond life as is here indicated. 

Of their pretended art of healing we have a de- 
scription in Josephus, as quoted in the Cambridge 
Bible for Schools and Colleges. " God gave Solomon 
skill against demons for the help and cure of men. 
And he arranged certain incantations whereby dis- 
eases are assuaged, and left behind him certain forms 
of exorcism whereby they so put to flight the over- 
powered evil spirits that they never return. And 



382 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



this method of curing is very prevalent among us to 
the present time." 

The price of the magical books that were burned 
is estimated by S chaff at $8,000. 

To this wonderful triumph may have been due in 
part Paul's influence throughout Asia Minor. 

" The most sensitive part of civilized man is his 
pocket; and it was there that opposition to Christian 
changes, or 'reforms,' began. Those ' reforms ' 
threatened to extinguish some ancient and respect- 
able trades, and promised no compensation; and 
thus all the large class that lived off the pilgrims and 
the temple service was marshaled against the new 
party, which threatened the livelihood of all." — 
Mamsay. 

It was thus that the phenomenal success of Paul's 
work was the source of a bitter persecution against 
him, as is shown in the last half of this chapter. 

21. Here Paul expresses the intention of visiting 
the churches he had organized in his previous prog- 
ress from Philippi to Corinth. It was his custom to 
revisit and confirm the churches that sprang up 
wherever he first passed. 

Here also is his first expressed intention of visiting 
Rome. In the greatness of his soul he seems to have 
taken the Roman empire for his parish, and it was 
fitting that he should visit its capital. He planned 
also to see Spain (Rom. xv. 24), the farthest western 
limit of the empire. 

23. Here follows what Prof. Ramsey calls " the 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



383 



most instructive picture of society in an Asian city at 
this period that has come down to us." 

24. "A certain man named Demetrius, a silver- 
smith." 

This enterprising business man roused the non- 
chalant eunuch priests of Diana to their danger, and 
when once roused they were excellent leaders of fa- 
naticism and mob violence. 

26. A high tribute to the extended influence of 
Paul's preaching, and an indication of his remorse- 
less antagonism to idolatry. 

27. " That the temple of the great goddess Diana 
should be despised, and her magnificence destroyed." 

The temple of Diana in Ephesus was one of the 
seven wonders of the world. It was 425 feet in 
length, 220 in breadth, with 127 columns 60 feet high, 
each said to have been the gift of a king, and many 
of them adorned with rich ornamentation in bas-re- 
lief. It was built of white marble, and was the glory 
of the city. Of this 44 proud temple, not one stone 
remains upon another. It is said that some of the 
pillars may be seen in the Mosque of St. Sophia at 
Constantinople." 

In the 35th verse, the townclerk says that the city 
of Ephesus is a worshiper of the great goddess 
Diana. This is an index to the general character of 
the people. Renan says of the city: " It might have 
been called the rendezvous of courtesans and viveurs. 
It was full to repletion of magicians, diviners, mimics, 
flute-players, eunuchs, jewelers, amulet and metal mer- 



384 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



chants, and romance writers. . . . The mildness 
of the climate disinclined one to serious things. 
Dancing and singing remained the sole occupation; 
public life degenerated into bacchanalian revels." 

28, 29. "An enthusiastic outcry for the preserva- 
tion of the endangered, and yet so lucrative! majesty 
of the goddess." — Meyer. 

We are told that the vast ruins of this theater are 
still to be seen, and that it was planned to seat thirty 
thousand people. 

31. "Certain of the chief of Asia." 

"The reference to Asiarchs is very important, both 
in respect to the nature of that office, on which it 
throws great light, . . . and as a fact of Pauline 
history. The Asiarchs, or high priests of Asia, were 
the heads of the imperial, political-religious organiza- 
tion of the province in the worship of 'Rome and 
the emperors,' and their friendly attitude is a proof 
both that the spirit of the imperial policy was not yet 
hostile to the new teaching, and that the educated 
classes did not share the hostility of the superstitious 
vulgar to Paul. Doubtless some of the Asiarchs had, 
in the ordinary course of dignity, previously held 
priesthoods of Artemis or other city deities ; and it is 
quite probable that up to the present time even the 
Ephesian priests were not hostile to Paul. The 
eclectic religion, which was fashionable at the time, 
regarded new forms of cult with equanimity, almost 
with friendliness; and the growth of each new super- 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



385 



stition only added to the influence of Artemis and 
her priests." — Ramsay. 

33,34. 6 'Alexander was a Jewish Christian; but 
his Christian position was either unknown to the 
mob, or they would listen to nothing at all from one 
belonging to the Jewish nation as the hereditary 
enemy of the worship of the gods." — Meyer. 

"For about two hours the vast assembly, like a 
crowd of devotees, or howling dervishes, shouted 
their invocation of ' Great Artemis ! ' In this scene 
we cannot mistake the tone of sarcasm and contempt, 
as Luke tells of this howling mob; they themselves 
thought they were performing their devotions, as 
they repeated the sacred name, but to Lake they 
were merely howling, not praying." — Ramsay. 

35. "And when the townclerk had appeased the 
people." 

This townclerk is "a most important personage, 
and his title is found at times on the coinage, and he 
gave name in some places to the year, like the 
Archon at Athens. Through him all public commu- 
nications were made to the city, and in his name 
replies were given." — Cambridge Bible for Schools 
and Colleges. 

Prof. Kamsay considers the speech of this "town- 
clerk" "a very skillful and important document in 
its bearing on the whole situation, and on Luke's 
plan." 

In brief, the speech shows that at this time the 
rulers did not consider Christianity as disloyal to the 

25 



386 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



government, and it points out the proper legal course 
to be taken in case accusations were to be brought 
against the Christians. 44 It is so entirely an apologia 
for the Christians that we might almost take it as 
an example of the Thucydidean type of speech, 
put into the mouth of one of the actors, not as 
being precisely his words, but as embodying a states- 
manlike conception of the real situation." 

CHAPTER XX. 

1-5. Strangely enough in these five verses Luke 
dismisses Paul's very interesting journey into Mace- 
donia and Greece, together with his return to Asia, 
including a list of his traveling companions. He 
hastens on to the relation of a new chapter in the 
life of Paul. This chapter begins with the birth 
of Paul's purpose to see Rome (xix. 21) ; the journey 
into Macedonia and Greece ends with the celebration 
of the Passover in Philippi ; from that moment Paul 
entered seriously upon the new enterprise, and the 
record becomes minutely descriptive. 

6, 7. For Prof. Ramsay's very interesting chrono- 
logical estimates based upon these verses, see Prelim- 
inary Essay, page 18. 

64 The moment Paul turns south from Philippi 
Luke writes with the utmost detail. The days and 
nights are given all the way from the chief city 
of Macedonia to the chief city of the Jews. It is not 
difficult to see how Paul and his company were 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



387 



engaged at almost every step. From the close of the 
Passover week in Philippi to the day of Pentecost in 
Jerusalem we know where Paul is and what he is 
doing. What is the meaning of this abundance of 
particulars? . . . Luke's presence on this jour- 
ney was the means by which he gathered all these 
items, but why did he write them? Shall we say that 
he whose object in every word set down hitherto was 
as clear as a sunbeam, becomes now suddenly pur- 
poseless in his narrative, and is nothing more than a 
news reporter? It will aid us in discovering what the 
history means here if we note the threads on which 
the multitudinous facts are hung. First of all, Paul 
is taking leave of the churches. He does not expect 
to see them again. The address to the Ephesian 
elders is given as a sample of these farewell visits. 
Again, this is the place to show the completeness and 
especially the unity of the churches. They all pos- 
sess the same spirit. That spirit is one of solicitude 
for the Gospel. Paul is everywhere warned against 
the danger that awaits him in Jerusalem. Again, in 
the section now before us we find for the first time 
warm exhibitions of love for Paul. Luke hitherto 
had only shown how the great missionary was hated. 
He had not told of the devotion of the Galatians, 
who would have plucked out their eyes for the apos- 
tle (Gal. iv. 14, 15), nor of the Thessalonians 
(I. Thess. iii. 6), and of the Philippians (Phil. i. 26). 
Now it is plain that the history, by lingering along 
day by day and depicting what is pleasant, means to 



388 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



prepare us for the painful events soon to occur in' 
Jerusalem. The churches are everywhere with Paul, 
but to carry out his grand design he leaves them for 
that caldron of rage where the Lord was rejected, 
and where he, too, must be." — Stifler. 

" The first day of the week." 

See Comments on Chapter ii., page 307. 

9. "The author vouches that Eutychus was dead, 
implying that, as a physician, he had satisfied himself 
on that point." — Ramsay. 

13. This twenty-mile walk after an all-night serv- 
ice indicates great physical endurance on the part of 
Paul. Did the apostle long for solitary communion 
with nature and with God? Luke gives no hint of 
Paul's reason for this course. 

16. " For Paul determined to sail by Ephesus." 

"Paul, having been disappointed in his first inten- 
tion of spending Passover in Jerusalem, was eager at 
any rate to celebrate Pentecost there. For the pur- 
pose which he had at heart, the formation of a 
perfect unity between the Jewish and non-Jewish 
sections of the church, it was important for him to 
be in Jerusalem to show his respect for one of the 
great feasts." — Ramsay. 

17. "And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and 
called for the elders of the church." 

"Paul intimates clearly that this is his farewell 
before entering on his enterprise in the West : 4 Ye 
shall see my face no more.' With a characteristic 
gesture he shows his hands : ' These hands have min- 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



389 



istered unto my necessities.' . . . The clinging 
affection which is expressed in the farewell scene, 
and the 'tearing ourselves away,' of xxi. 1 (Variorum 
rendering), make a very pathetic picture."— Ram- 
say. 

28. "The church of God." 

"Many ancient authorities read the Lord" (Mar- 
gin of the Eevised Version). Meyer decides in favor 
of this reading. 

36, 37. Of this farewell meeting Eenan says: 
"They all knelt and prayed. There was nought 
heard but a stifled sob. Paul's words, 'Ye shall see 
my face no more,' had pierced their hearts. In turn 
the elders of Ephesus fell on the apostle's neck and 
kissed him." 

"Paul was a man of strong conviction and great 
force of character, but also possessed of exquisite 
tenderness and a wealth of affection. If he had 
to endure the strongest enmities, he also won for 
himself the deepest and most enduring friendships. 
At once so gigantic and so gentle, his personality was 
a great power, and seemed wholly to overshadow his 
companions and followers, though in themselves men 
of great excellence and worth, such as Timothy, 
Titus, Silas, Luke, and others."— Ormiston. 



390 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



CHAPTER XXI. 

An intense interest attaches to this and the follow- 
ing chapters of the book, both from the standpoint 
of Paul's later history, and of the attitude of the 
Roman rulers to the Christian religion. For fullness 
of treatment on the latter point, the reader must be 
referred to Prof. Ramsay's work, already many times 
noted. 

3,4. "Landed at Tyre; . . and having sought 
out the disciples" (Variorum rendering). There is 
no account of any missionary work in Tyre. But by 
this time Paul and his companions had learned to 
expect Christians in every such considerable city on 
the Mediterranean, and to search them out. 

10,11. "Agabus." Undoubtedly the same prophet 
who is mentioned in chapter xi. 28. 

16. "Mnason, ... an old disciple." Like 
Barnabas, he was of Cyprus. Unlike Barnabas, he 
seems not to have given over his property to the 
church, since he had a house in Jerusalem large 
enough to accommodate Paul and his companions 
during the throng of the Pentecost season. 

21. This verse has an emphatic bearing on the 
Jewish-Gentile controversy, and is an example of the 
false reports intentionally made current about Paul's 
teaching. 

22-25. The course proposed by James and the 
elders of the Jerusalem church was not inconsistent 
with Paul's rule of expediency by which he "became 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



391 



all things to all men." Besides, he had had a vow in 
Corinth, and had shaved his head in Cenchrea. That 
these four Jewish Christians should have a Nazarite 
vow upon them shows how tenaciously many in the 
Jerusalem church still clung to the Mosaic forms of 
worship. (See Num. vi.) That Paul should purify 
himself with them and pay the expenses of their 
release would prove that he was not antagonistic 
to the ancient customs. Perhaps there is no other 
incident that so fully illustrates his true position. 
He had come to look upon all these things as not 
legally binding (I. Cor. vii. 19), but simply as expe- 
dient for such Jewish Christians as felt the need 
of them, and inexpedient for all Gentiles. (See 
Essay XIV.) 

27. No doubt the plan would have succeeded had 
it not been for these "Jews which were of Asia." 

33. From this time forth to the close of the 
record Paul is a distinguished Roman prisoner. His 
imprisonment was in reality rescue, and it was the 
providential means of his reaching Rome. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

1. "Hear ye my defense." 

"In this speech to the multitude the apostle gives a 
skillfully arranged account of his past experience and 
conduct with the view of allaying the fanatical ex- 
citement of many of the Jews, and of replying to 
their unfounded accusations against him. He avows 



392 



STUDIES m ACTS 



himself to be a Jew both by birth and training; 
refers to his fierce persecution of Christians; gives 
an account of his wonderful and memorable conver- 
sion; explains how he was baptized and admitted 
into the fellowship of the disciples by a pious Jew, 
and refers to his labors among the Gentiles. 
Throughout the address he depreciates himself, exalts 
Christ, and makes conversion to him an epoch in the 
life of the convert. It is interesting to note how the 
addresses delivered by Paul on this occasion, and 
when brought before Agrippa (Ch. xxvi.), differ 
from each other and from the narrative given by 
Luke (Ch. ix.), and yet how they harmonize in all 
material points. The discrepancies in the several 
statements present no serious difficulties to any ex- 
cept those who seek to find and multiply contradic- 
tions in Scripture." . . . 44 It is observable that 
in speaking to the Jews from the stairs of the castle 
Paul not only uses the Hebrew dialect but gives a 
Jewish coloring to the entire narrative; while, when 
addressing Agrippa and his associates in the royal 
hall, in keeping with the place and parties, he gives 
the story a strong Gentile coloring, speaking of the 
hostility of the Jews, and of the persecuted Chris- 
tians as saints." — Ormiston. 

12. 4 'Ananias, a devout man according to the 
law." 

4 4 The apostle neglects nothing in his address which 
can conciliate his audience, and so he tells them that 
the messenger whom God sent to him was 4 well 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



393 



reported of by all the Jews that dwelt in Damas- 
cus.' " — Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. 

15. "Thou shalt be his witness unto all men of 
what thou hast seen and heard." 

This was the Apostle Paul's commission and is to 
be compared with that given to the other apostles by 
the risen Savior (Matt, xxviii. 19, 20; Mark xvi. 15, 
16; Luke xxiv. 46-48). 

16. 44 Be baptized, and wash away thy sins." 
Compare this with Titus iii.5: 4 4 According to his 

mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, 
and renewing of the Holy Spirit." (Also with Eph. 
v. 25-27.) 

44 Baptism administered to real penitents is both a 
means and a seal of pardon. Nor did God ordinarily 
in the primitive church bestow this on any, unless 
through this means." — John Wesley. 

22. 44 They gave him audience unto this word." 

The very name Gentile was enough to infuriate 
this people. Up to this point Paul prudently re- 
frained from its use. Immediately when it fell from 
his lips the outbreak began. The incident is an indi- 
cation of the abysmal hatred of the Jews, and it 
serves to enhance in our minds the mighty problem 
that confronted Paul. 

27. "Art thou a Eoman? " 

44 With a wild and cruel fanaticism they shouted, 
'Away with him; away with such a fellow from the 
earth; for it is not fit that he should live.' Thus 
began one of the most odious and despicable specta- 



394 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



cles which the world can witness, the spectacle of an 
Oriental mob, hideous with impotent rage, howling, 
cursing, gnashing their teeth, flinging about their 
arms, waving and tossing their blue and red robes, 
casting dust into the air by handfuls, with all the 
furious gesticulations of an uncontrolled fanaticism." 

Rescued from the mob by Lysias, and about to be 
examined by scourging, Paul appealed to his rights 
as a Roman citizen. This rescue and this appeal are 
made prominent by Luke. The very words of the 
appeal are given, and the startled centurion's 
response, ''Art thou a Roman?" and the scene has 
in it the thrill of tragedy. 

"As if the fact were incredible the centurion 
added, 4 The privilege of citizenship cost me much.' 
To this Paul with great dignity replied, 4 1 have been 
a citizen from my birth.' By the Lex Portia Roman 
citizens were exempt from all degrading punishment, 
such as that of scourging. The words Civus 
Romanus sum acted like a magical charm in dis- 
arming the violence of provincial magistrates. . . » 
4 It is a crime to bind a Roman citizen; a heinous 
iniquity to scourge him; what shall I say to crucify 
him?' 

"According to the Roman law it was death for any 
one falsely to assert a claim to the immunities of 
citizenship, one of which was exemption from the 
lash . ' ' — Ormiston . 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



395 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

2. "With disgraceful illegality Ananias ordered 
the officers of the court to smite him on the mouth." 
— -Farrar. 

3. - 44 God shall smite thee, thou whited wall." 
"Where," asks St. Jerome, 44 is that patience of 

the Savior, who, as a lamb led to the slaughter, opens 
not his mouth ; who gently asks the smiter, 4 If I 
have spoken evil, bear witness to the evil; but if 
well, why smitest thou me? ' We are not detracting 
from the apostle, but declaring the glory of God, 
who, suffering in the flesh, reigns above the wrong 
and frailty of the flesh." — Jerome. Quoted by 
Farrar. 

Even the greatest of Christ's servants suffers by 
comparison with the Master himself. 

44 We know from Josephus that Ananias did come 
to a violent end. St. Paul calls him 4 whited wall ' 
because he bore the semblance of a minister of 
justice, but was not what he seemed. Cp. 4 whited 
sepulchers ' Matt, xxiii. 27." — Cambridge Bible for 
Schools and Colleges. 

5. 44 1 wist not, brethren, that he was high priest." 

How should Paul not know that he was high priest? 
44 Numerous explanations have been offered. The 
most satisfactory, though not free from objections, is 
that given by Bengal, Neander, Hackett, Schaff, 
Howson and others, which supposes that Paul meant 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



that he did not recollect or consider that it was the 
high priest whom he was addressing. . . . Farrar 
suggests that in a crowded assembly he had not 
noticed who the speaker was. Owing to his weak- 
ness of sight, all that he saw before him was a 
blurred white figure, issuing a brutal order, and to 
this person, who, in his external whiteness and in- 
ward worthlessness, thus reminded him of the plasv 
tered wall of a sepulcher, he had addressed his 
indignant denunciation." 

After the first flash of indignant resentment was 
over, Paul immediately resumed his wonted style of 
urbane and perfect gentility. 

The frankness and dignity of his apology are admir- 
able, and politic also as showing his familiarity with 
the Scriptures and his high regard for them. 

6. "I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee." 

Farrar thinks Paul's course here was not ingen- 
uous, and he sees in xxiv. 21, an indication that Paul 
himself regretted it. Alford, however, says: " Sure- 
ly no defense of Paul for adopting this course is 
required, but all admiration is due for his skill and 
presence of mind." 

9. " And there arose a great cry." 

What fierce passions, how little self-control, what 
an utter lack of the judicial mind in this Jewish San- 
hedrin ! 

11. "Be of good cheer, Paul. As thou hast tes- 
tified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness 
also at Rome." 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



397 



"On this passage Alford has the following excel- 
lent remarks : By these few words the Lord assured 
him of a safe issue of his present troubles, of an 
accomplishment of his intention of visiting Rome, of 
the certainty that he should preach the Gospel and 
bear testimony there. So that they upheld and com- 
forted him in the uncertainty of his life from the 
Jews, in the uncertainty of his liberation from the 
prison in Csesarea, in the uncertainty of his surviving 
the storm in the Mediterranean, in the uncertainty of 
his fate on arriving at Rome. So may one crumb of 
divine grace and help be multiplied to feed five 
thousand wants and anxieties." — Quoted by Ormiston. 

12. " Bound themselves by a great curse." 

Perhaps they were piqued at the way in which 
Paul had escaped them, and became the more mali- 
cious. 

16. This is the only reference to Paul's relatives 
to be found in the New Testament. 

23. That a force of 470 soldiers should be de- 
tailed for this march, indicates the apprehension of 
the Roman officials. That such a force could be 
spared from Jerusalem on a moment's notice indi- 
cates the strength of the army that was kept there. 

27. "Having understood that he was a Roman." 

Lysias did not know that he was a Roman till after 
he had rescued Paul. Meyer calls this a lie, and sees 
in it a proof of the genuineness of the letter. That 
Lysias should warp the truth in k this ingenious way 
for a purpose, would be quite natural. That an 



398 



STUDIES m ACTS 



author should create such a fiction with no purpose 
in it from his own standpoint would be unaccount- 
able. Luke recorded what happened. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

1. "A certain orator named Tertullus, who in- 
formed the governor against Paul." 

44 The Jews, probably because ignorant of Eoman 
law, engaged the services of a Eoman barrister of 
eminent ability, persuasive eloquence, and probably 
of great reputation, to make the charges against the 
apostle. From the outline given of his speech, he 
was evidently a practiced pleader, and a voluble, 
plausible orator. Augustine says, 4 Eloquence is the 
gift of God, but the eloquence of a bad man is like 
poison in a golden cup!" — Ormiston. 

44 The language of Tertullus is that of gross flat- 
tery. History ascribes to Felix a very different char- 
acter. Both Josephus and Tacitus represent him as 
one of the most corrupt and oppressive rulers ever 
sent by the Romans into Judea. He deserved some 
praise for the vigor with which he suppressed the 
bands of robbers by which the country had been 
infested. The compliment had that basis, but no 
more." — Ha ckett . 

It has been suggested that even this was because 
he preferred a monopoly on robbery. 

5-9. 44 Having made an orderly and formal indict- 
ment against the apostle of treason against Rome, 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



399 



schism against Moses, and profanity against the gods, 
the clever and crafty advocate insinuates that the 
Sanhedrin would have judged Paul righteously had 
Lysias not interposed, and further gets the elders to 
assent to all that he had said." — Ormiston. 

10-21. Paul replies definitely to the charges. He 
could not have created a sedition against the Roman 
government in twelve days. So far from schism they 
had found him purified in the temple with gifts and 
offerings. As to heresy, he confesses that after the 
way which they called a heresy he worshiped God. 
This he explains at some length, and pleads a con- 
science void of offense toward God and man. Before 
a Eoman tribunal his peculiar way of worshiping 
Jehovah would count for nothing. He was claiming 
a recognized right. 

17. 44 Now after many years I came to bring alms 
to my nation." 

44 This allusion is very abrupt. It is the first and 
only intimation contained in the Acts that Paul had 
been taking up contributions on so extensive a plan. 
The manner in which the epistles supply this defi- 
ciency, as Paley has shown (Horse Paulinse), fur- 
nishes an incontestable proof of the credibility of 
the New Testament writers." — Hachett. 

26. "Felix trembled." 

Tacitus says of Felix: 44 In the practice of all 
kinds of lust, crime and cruelty, he exercised the 
power of a king and the temper of a slave." 

Respecting Felix and his wife Drusilla, Hackett 



400 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



quotes Josephus as follows: " Agrippa gave his sis- 
ter Drusilla in marriage to Azizus, king of the 
Emesenes, who had consented to be circumcised for 
the sake of the alliance. But this marriage of Dru- 
silla with Azizus was dissolved in a short time, after 
this manner. When Felix was procurator of Judaea 
he saw her, and, being captivated with her beauty, 
persuaded her to desert her husband, transgress the 
laws of her country, and marry himself." 

"The fate of this woman," Hackett observes, 
" was singular. She had a son by Felix, and both 
the mother and the son were among those who lost 
their lives in the eruption of Vesuvius in A. D. 79." 

Paul was brought before the bar of Felix, but 
Felix trembled before the bar of Paul. He trembled, 
but with him as with many another sinner, procras- 
tination took the place of repentance, and " the 
thief of time " was found to be also the thief of the 
soul. His groveling nature sought a bribe; the apos- 
tle offered him heaven and God. He little knew or 
cared that 

" Through all ages and in all human story 
The path of duty is the way to glory." 

CHAPTER XXV. 

1-5. This was a critical time for Paul. The new 
procurator would wish to please the chief men among 
the Jews. These wealthy and influential men made 

a plausible request, namely, that instead of subject- 
ing them to the inconvenience of going to Caesarea, 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



401 



Paul should be brought back to Jerusalem for trial. 
"Two years of deferred hopes and obstructed pur- 
poses and dreary imprisonment had not quenched the 
deadly antipathy of the Jews to the man whose free 
offer of the Gospel to the Gentiles seemed to them 
one of the most fatal omens of their impending 
ruin." Their request was to have Paul once more 
before the Sanhedrin ; their plan was to assassinate 
him. But Festus was not to be trifled with, and 
falling back upon the requirements of the Roman 
law, he answered that Paul was kept in charge at 
Csesarea (Revised Version). Once more under the 
laws of Rome, the assassins were thwarted and Paul 
was saved. Meyer asks us to notice the contrast be- 
tween Jewish baseness and the strict order of the 
Roman government. 

9. Festus, knowing Paul's rights as a Roman citi- 
zen, can do no more than propose to release him 
from all charges before the Roman law, and request 
him to go to Jerusalem for trial upon charges before 
the Sanhedrin. 

10. "I am standing before Caesar's judgment 
seat." See Essay XII. 

13. This was Herod Agrippa II., son of Herod 
Agrippa I., whose tragical death is related in xii. 20- 
24. He was grandson of Aristobulus, and great- 
grandson of Herod the Great. It is well understood 
that his sister Bernice was living with him in a 
criminal way. "She was noted for her beauty and 
profligacy. Luke's accuracy in introducing her at 

" 26 



402 



STUDIES IX ACTS 



this stage of the history is worthy of remark. After 
a brief marriage with her first husband, she became 
the wife of Herod, her uncle, king of Chalcis, and on 
his death remained for a time with her brother, 
Agrippa. Her third marriage with Polemon, king of 
Cilicia, she soon dissolved, and returned to her 
brother not long before the death of the emperor 
Claudius (A. D. 54). She could have been with 
Agrippa, therefore, in the time of Festus, as Luke 
represents in our narrative. Her subsequent connec- 
tion with Yespasian and Titus made her name 
familiar to Roman writers. Several of them, Taci- 
tus, Suetonius, and Juvenal, either mention her ex- 
pressly or allude to her." — Hackett. 

This Agrippa sided with the Romans in the war 
against Jerusalem. After the fall of the city he 
retired to Rome with his sister Bernice, and there 
died in 100 A, D. 

23. See Comment on xxvi. 1. 

26. "Unto my lord." 

Gloag says: 4 ' In the use of this title we have an 
instance of the extreme accuracy of the historian of 
the Acts." 

"This title was declined by the first two emperors, 
Augustus and Tiberias. Caligula (37-41) accepted it, 
but it was not a recognized title of any emperor 
before Domitian (81-96). . . . Antoninus Pius 
(138-161) was the first who put this title on his coins. 
Polycarp, who was a contemporary of some of the 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



403 



apostles, and who suffered martyrdom at an advanced 
age, refused to utter it." — Ormiston. 

CHAPTER XXYI. 

1. "Then Paul stretched forth the hand, and an- 
swered for himself." 

"It was not, as commonly represented, a new trial. 
That would have been on all grounds impossible. 
Agrippa was without judical functions, and the 
authority of the procurator had been cut short by the 
appeal. It was more in the nature of a private, or 
drawing-room audience — a sort of show occasion, 
designed for the amusement of these princely guests, 
and the idle aristocracy of Caesarea, both Jewish and 
Gentile. Festus had ordered the auditorium to be 
prepared for the occasion, and invited all the chief 
officers of the army and the principal inhabitants of 
the town (xxv. 23). The Herods were fond of show, 
and Festus gratified their humor by a grand pro- 
cessional display." — Farrar. 

6. Paul claims that Christianity is the true fruit- 
age of Judaism. 

8. A sudden and impassioned appeal, and an un- 
answerable argument in favor of the resurrection. 

10, 11. An intimation of the extent of Paul's work 
of persecution, and a proof that he was implicated 
in the death of others than Stephen. 

12-19. Paul's second account of the Christophany 
at the time of his conversion, the first having been 



404 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



given in Hebrew before the angry Jews in Jerusalem 
(xxii. 5-11). 

"There are some differences between this speech 
and the one made on the stairs of the castle in Jeru- 
salem. The contradictions are only apparent and 
vanish before a little scrutiny. Here before Agrippa 
Paul does not hesitate to call the disciples whom he 
had persecuted, saints, holy persons (v. 10), a term 
which would have been resented had it been used in 
the former speech before the mob. There he said 
instead 'men and women' (xxii. 4). In describing 
the scene on the Damascus road some particulars not 
given before are mentioned. The light was ' above 
the brightness of the sun.' They 'all' fell to the 
ground. The voice spake to him 'in th^ Hebrew 
tongue.' It said, 'It is hard for thee to kick against 
the pricks.' These particulars would go to show 
before Agrippa that in that sublime moment Paul 
was calm and self-possessed. He noted everything. 
He did not fall down in a swoon. All fell before the 
power of the light. It was not a delusion, not a 
mere vision. It was a sensible reality." — Stifler. 

Paul begins and ends his account of the Chris- 
tophany with a respectful address to the king (vv. 
13 and 19). 

20-23. "Paul was now launched on the full tide 
of the sacred and impassioned oratory which was so 
powerful an agent in his mission work. He was 
delivering to kings and governors and chief captains 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



405 



that testimony which was the chief object of his 
life." — Farrar. 

24. "Festus saw that nature was not working in 
Paul; grace he did not see." 

44 His profane mind remained wholly unaffected by 
the holy inspiration of the strange speaker, and took 
his utterances as the whims of a mind perverted by 
much study from the equilibrium of sound under- 
standing. ' ' — Meyer. 

25. Paul was rudely interrupted, but his reply was 
admirable. His speech was marred, but his courtesy 
was perfect. 

28. "Then Agrippa said unto Paul, with but little 
persuasion thou wouldest fain make me a Christian" 
(Revised Version). 

Herod must have uttered the word 4 4 Christian" 
with a good-natured sneer, mingled of Jewish preju- 
dice and Roman pride. 

44 The king is of course well-meaning enough not to 
take amiss the burning words, but also as a luxurious 
man of the world, sufficiently estranged from what is 
holy instantly to banish the transiently felt impres- 
sion with haughtily contemptuous mockery." — 
Meyer. 

44 Doubtless his polished remark on this compen- 
dious style of making converts sounded very witty to 
that distinguished company, and they would with 
difficulty suppress their laughter at the notion that 
Agrippa, favorite of Claudius, friend of Nero, King 
of Chalcis, Ituria, Trachonitis, nominator of the high 



406 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



priest, and supreme guardian of the temple treasures, 
should succumb to the potency of this ' short method 
with a Jew.' That Paul should make the king a 
Christian (!) would sound too ludicrous. But the 
laugh would be instantly suppressed in pity and 
admiration of the poor but noble prisoner, as with 
perfect dignity he took advantage of Agrippa's am- 
biguous expression, and said, with all the fervent sin- 
cerity of a loving heart, 'I could pray to God that 
whether in little or in much not thou only, but even 
all who are listening to me this day might become 
even such as I am except — he added as he raised his 
fettered hand — except these bonds.' They saw that 
this was indeed no common prisoner; one who could 
argue as he had argued, and speak as he had spoken; 
one who was so filled with the exaltation of an inspir- 
ing idea, so enriched with the happiness of a firm 
faith and a peaceful conscience, that he could tell 
them how he prayed that they all — all those princely 
and distinguished people — could be even such as he — 
and who yet in the spirit of entire forgiveness desired 
that the sharing of his faith might not involve the 
sharing of his sorrows and misfortunes — must be 
such a one as they never yet had seen or known 
either in the worlds of Jewry or heathendom." — 
Farrar. 

Paul does not resent the name Christian; he 
accepts and defends it. Herod's use of it shows that 
it had traveled far beyond the city of its origin. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



407 



' ' No more he feels upon his high-raised arm 
The ponderous chain, than does the playful child 
The bracelet formed of many a flowery link ; 
Heedless of self, forgetful that his life 
Is now to be defended by his words, 
He only thinks of doing good to them 
That seek his life." — Graham. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

1. "A convoy of prisoners was starting for Rome 
under charge of a centurion of the Augustan cohort, 
and a detachment of soldiers, and Paul was sent 
along with it. He, of course, occupied a very differ- 
ent position from the other prisoners. He was a 
man of distinction, a Roman citizen who had ap- 
pealed for trial to the supreme court of Rome. The 
others had been in all probability condemned to 
death, and were going to supply the perpetual de- 
mand which Rome made on the provinces for human 
victims to amuse the populace by their death in the 
arena. 

Luke uses the first person throughout the narra- 
tive, and he was therefore in Paul's company. But 
how was this permitted? It is hardly possible to sup- 
pose that the prisoner's friends were allowed to 
accompany him. Pliny mentions a case in point. 
Psetus was brought a prisoner from Illiricum to 
Rome, and his wife Arria vainly begged to accompany 
him ; several slaves were permitted to go with him as 
waiters, valets, etc., and Arria offered herself alone 
to perform all their duties; but her prayer was 



408 



STUDIES m ACTS 



refused. The analogy shows how Luke and Aris- 
tarchus accompanied Paul. They must have gone as 
his slaves, not merely performing the duties of slaves 
(as Arria offered to do), but actually passing as 
slaves. In this way not merely had Paul faithful 
friends always beside him; but his importance in the 
eyes of the centurion was enhanced, and that was of 
great importance. The narrative clearly implies that 
Paul enjoyed much respect during this voyage, such 
as a penniless traveler without a servant to attend 
him would never receive either in the first century or 
the nineteenth."-— Ramsay. 

2. Aristarchus. See xix. 29; xx. 4; Col. iv. 10, 
and Philem. 24. How gladly would we know more 
of this man who was such a faithful companion of 
Paul during the last chapters of his history! The 
term " fellow-prisoner" in Col. iv. 10 may be used by 
Paul as an emphatic and tender compliment to his 
constant friendship. 

For a paragraph on this interesting voyage the 
reader must be referred to Essay XII. ; for a close 
study of it, to Prof. Ramsay's work already many 
times quoted. 

9. "The fast." The fast of the Day of Atone- 
ment. This fast fell, according to Prof. Ramsay, on 
Oct. 5th, 59. It was observed by Paul and Aris- 
tarchus and is used by Luke as a note of time, show- 
ing that the season was so far advanced as to make 
navigation dangerous. After Nov. 11, all navigation 
on the open sea was discontinued. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



409 



14. " But not long after there arose a tempestuous 
(typhonic) wind, called Euraquilo " (Revised Ver- 
sion). 

"Before they got half way across the open bay 
(seventeen miles from shore to shore) there came a 
sudden change, such as is characteristic on that sea, 
where 'southerly winds almost invariably shift to a 
violent northerly wind.' There struck down from 
the Cretan mountains, which towered above them to 
the height of over 7,000 feet, a sudden eddying squall 
from about east north-east. Every one who has any 
experience sailing on lakes and bays overhung by 
mountains will appreciate the epithet 'typhonic,' 
which Luke uses. As a ship captain recently said to 
me in relating an anecdote of his own experience in 
Cretan waters, ' The wind comes down from those 
mountains fit to blow the ship out of the water.' " — 
Ramsay. 

19. " With our own hands we threw away all the 
ship's fittings and equipment." " This verse is a 
climax. It records the extreme act of sacrifice. The 
first person used in the Authorized Version occurs 
only in some less authoritative MSS., but greatly 
increases the effect. The sailors threw overboard 
part of the cargo ; and the passengers and supernu- 
meraries, in eager anxiety to do something, threw 
overboard whatever movables they found, which was 
of little or no practical use, but they were eager to do 
something. This makes a striking picture of growing 
panic; but the third person which appears in the 



410 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



great MSS., is ineffective, and makes no climax." — 
Ramsay. 

21-26. Paul's action here is that of one whose 
soul is calmed by faith, and whose God answers 
prayer. Paul held the secret of heroism. 

" God hath given thee all them that are with thee." 
Evidently Paul had been praying for this. He who 
calmed the sea of Galilee could grant an answer to 
Paul's prayers for the souls of his fellows in the 
storm. 

31. Here and in verse 11 the centurion is repre- 
sented as in chief command of the ship. Prof. 
Eamsay says: 

"To our modern ideas the captain is supreme on 
the deck of his ship . . . Here the ultimate 
decision lies with the centurion, and he takes the 
advice of the captain. The centurion therefore is 
represented as the commanding officer, which implies 
that the ship was a government ship, and the cen- 
turion ranked as the highest officer on board. That 
doubtless is true to the facts of Roman service. The 
provisioning of the vast city of Rome, situated in a 
country where farming had ceased to pay owing to 
the ruinous foreign competition in grain, was the 
most serious and pressing department of the Imperial 
administration. Whatever else the Emperor might 
neglect, this he could not neglect and live. In the 
urban populace he was holding a wild beast by the 
ear; and, if he did not feed it, the beast would tear 
him to pieces. With ancient means of transport the 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



411 



task was a hundred times harder than it would be 
now; and the service of ships on which Rome was* 
entirely dependent was not left to private enterprise, 
but was a state department." 

33. On board ship during a storm there is great 
inconvenience in getting food, and with many not 
much inclination to take it. For these reasons the 
fourteen days was a practical though not an absolute 
fast. 

4 4 What the apostle means is that the crew and 
passengers had taken during all that time no regular 
food, only snatching a morsel now and then when 
they were able, and that of something which had not 
been prepared." — Cambridge Bible for Schools and 
Colleges. 

35. A sublime act. Amidst the storm, upon a 
creaking and heaving vessel no longer sea-worthy, 
among faces pale and haggard with fear, there is one 
man who is calm, prayerful, thankful; who praises 
God while breaking bread, and by word and example 
encourages others to be calm and to eat. "Like the 
father of a family among those at table," says 
Meyer. 

44. 44 So it came to pass that all escaped safe to 
land." 44 Only the rarest conjunction of favorable 
circumstances could have brought about such a for- 
tunate ending of their apparently hopeless situation ; 
and one of the completest services that has been ren- 
dered to New Testament scholarship is James 
Smith's proof (Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul) 



412 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



that all these circumstances are united in St. Paul's 
Bay. The only difficulty to which he has applied a 
rather violent solution is the sandy beach; at the 
traditional point where the ship was run ashore 
there is no sandy beach; but he considers that it is 
* now worn away by the wasting action of the sea.' 
On this detail only local knowledge would justify a 
decision." — Ramsay. 

"If the assumption of the school of Bauer as to 
the set purpose animating the book of Acts were cor- 
rect, this narrative of the voyage, with all its collat- . 
eral circumstances in such detail, would be a mean- 
ingless ballast of the book. But it justifies itself in 
the purely historical destination of the work, and 
confirms that destination." — Meyer. 

" Ridge of the mountain wave, lower thy crest! 
Wail of Euraquilo, be thou at rest! 
Sorrow can never be, darkness must fly, 
Where salt h the Light of light, Peace! It is I." 

— Greek hymn of Anatolius. Quoted by Schaff. 

CHAPTER XXVin. 

1. "They knew that the island was called Melita." 

Modern Malta. At present there can be no doubt 
about the identification of this island. 

" The objections which have been advanced, that 
there are now no vipers on the island, and only one 
place where any wood grows, are too trivial to de- 
serve notice. Such changes are natural and probable 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



413 



in a small island, populous and long civilized." — 
Ramsay. 

2. "The term 'barbarians' is characteristic of 
the nationality of the writer. It does not indicate 
rudeness or uncivilized habits, but merely non-Greek 
birth. It is difficult to imagine that a Syrian or a 
Jew or any one but a Greek would have applied the 
name to the people of Malta, who had been in con- 
tact with the Phoenicians and the Romans for many 
centuries." — Ramsay. 

7. " Chief man of the island, whose name was 
Publius." This is another of the noble Romans 
whom we are accustomed to meet so frequently in 
the book of Acts. The Apostle Paul richly repays 
his hospitality. 

11. 44 A ship of Alexandria." A government 
corn-ship plying between Egypt and Rome. (See 
note on xxvii. 31.) 

14. " . . Puteoli, where we found brethren." 

"Puteoli, as a great harbor, was a central point 
and a crossing of intercourse ; and thus Christianity 
had already established itself there. All movements 
of thought throughout the Empire acted with mar- 
velous rapidity on Rome, the heart of the vast and 
complicated organism; and the crossing-places or 
knots on the main highways of intercourse with the 
East, Puteoli, Corinth, Ephesus, Syrian Antioch — 
became centers from which Christianity radiated." — 
Ramsay. 

" The concession of a seven days' stay so near the 



414 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



end of the journey, testifies how much Paul possessed 
the love and confidence of the centurion." — Meyer. 

During these seven days the brethren in Rome 
could easily be notified of Paul's progress toward 
the city. 

15. The Three Taverns was about 33 miles out 
from Rome, and Appii Forum about 40. Paul had 
never before been welcomed and escorted thus to a 
city. Rome was an " epitome of the inhabited 
world," and Paul had long desired to visit it as the 
climax of his labors. How ardently he must have 
approached the city! and with what misgivings as a 
prisoner in chains! How many doubts must have 
risen in his mind ! Had his Jewish enemies com- 
municated with the authorities, or with the Jewish 
Christians? Would the church receive him at all? 
Would his old friends and former fellow-workers, 
some of whom had drifted to Rome, welcome him? 
Ah, they knew his heart, and they knew his circum- 
stances, and they did a most gracious thing in going 
out to greet and welcome him. 

16. "Captain of the guard." 

" The Greek title Stratopedarch very rarely 
occurs; and it remained for Mommsen, aided by the 
form given in an old Latin version, Princeps Peri- 
grinorum, to explain who the officer really was, and 
to place the whole episode of Paul's Roman impris- 
onment in a new light. 

"Augustus had reduced to a regular system the 
maintenance of communications between the center 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



415 



of control in Rome and the armies stationed in the 
great frontier provinces. Legionary centurions, com- 
monly called frumeniarii, went to and fro between 
Rome and the armies, and were employed for numer- 
ous purposes that demanded communication between 
the Emperor and his armies and provinces. They 
acted not only for commissariat purposes (whence 
the name), but as couriers, and for police purposes, 
and for conducting prisoners; and in time they 
became detested as agents and spies of the govern- 
ment. They all belonged to legions stationed in the 
provinces, and were considered to be on detached 
duty when they went to Eome; and hence in Rome 
they were 'soldiers from abroad,' perigrini, While 
in Eome they resided in a camp on the Cselian Hill, 
called Castra Perigrinorum. In this camp there 
were always a number of them present, changing 
from day to day, as some came and others went 
away. This camp was under the command of the 
Princeps Perigrinorum ; and it is clear that Strato- 
pedarch in Acts is the Greek name for that officer." 
— Pamsay. 

17-31, For material upon these verses the reader 
is referred to the last pages of Essay XII. 

"During the two years of his imprisonment Paul 
regarded himself as 4 an ambassador in a chain' 
(Eph. vi. 20); he asked the prayers of the Colossian 
and Asian churches generally for his success in 
preaching; his tone is hopeful, and full of energy 
and spirit for the work (Col. iv. 3, 4), and he looked 



416 



STUDIES IN ACTS 



forward to acquittal and a visit to Colossas (Philem. 
22)."— Ramsay. 

"The presence of many friends in Koine also 
cheered Paul. He had been permitted to take two 
personal attendants with him from Caesarea; but 
though his other companions in Jerusalem were pre- 
vented from accompanying him in his voyage, some 
of them followed him to Eome. Timothy was with 
him during the great part of his imprisonment, was 
sent on a mission to Philippi about the end of 61 
(Phil. ii. 19), and thereafter seems to have had his 
headquarters in Asia, whence he was summoned by 
Paul to join him during his second imprisonment. 
Tychicus also joined Paul in Rome in 60, and was 
sent on a mission to Asia, and especially to the 
churches of the Lycos valley, early in 61. They 
probably left Csesarea when Paul sailed for Rome, 
visited on the way their own homes, and arrived in 
Eome not long after Paul himself." — Ramsay. 

It is pleasing to note that Mark visited Paul in 
Rome (Col. iv. 10), and that Paul commends him 
warmly to the Christians whom he expected to meet 
in Asia, and even took pains to send oral commenda- 
tions beforehand in his behalf. With these glimpses 
of friendship and reunion, and of forgetting and for- 
giving, and of " care for all the churches," the life of 
Paul passes from the pages of history. 

"Paul at Rome! Climax of the Gospel! End of 
Acts! Victory of the word of God! " — Bengel. 



INDEX 



Advent, second. 320. 
Agabus, 139. 
Amos, quoted, 149. 
Amphitheater, 185. 
Ananias and Sapphira, 83. 
Angel, of the Church, 280. 
Antioch, in Syria, 123 f. 
Antiochus, Epipanes, death of, 
153. 

Apostles, Chris tological teach- 
ing of, 54. 
Aquila, 234. 
Aristarchus, 250. 
Arnold, quoted, 189. 
Athens, 227. 

Atonement, 23, 46, 59, 60. 
Augustine, quoted, 140. 
Baptism, 45, 51, 52, 224, 314, 319, 
346. 

Baptism, household, 374. 

Baptism, infant, 375. 

Baptism, culmination of conver- 
sion, 117. 

Barnabas, 129, 159. 

Berea, church established, 227. 

Blasphemy, final, 73. 

Brace, Charles Eoring, quoted, 
137, 187. 

Browning, Mrs. quoted, 233. 

Brutus, suicide of, 223. 

Campbell, A., quoted, 274. 

Carey, William, 177, 224. 

Carlyle, quoted, 43, 232. 

Charles IX.. of Prance, death of, 
154. 

Christian, the name, 134, 355, 356, 
406. 

Christophany, of Stephen, 96. 
Chronology, of Acts, 17. 
Chrysostom, 39. 

Church, a praying brotherhood, 
63. 

Church, benefactions of, 67. 
Church, basis of membership in, 
52. 

Church, social soul of, 67. 



Cicero, quoted. 124. 
Civilization, Greek, 188. 
Claudius, edict of, 18. 
Commission, Christ's, 30. 
Communion Service, 58, 61. 
Communism, 65, 66, 140, 326 f. 
Confession, the good, 346. 
Conversion, 318. 
Cook, Joseph, quoted, 218, 221. 
Cornelius, conversion of, 105 f, 

character of, 115. 
Covetousness, 329. 
Corinth, described, 233. 
Cowper, quoted, 28. 
Crafts, Rev. Wilbur F., quoted, 

308. 

Creasy, quoted, 189. 
Creed, Apostles', 54, 80. 
Crown, of thorns, 31. 
Crucifixion, 36. 
Deacons. 90, 280. 
Demas, 251. 
Denominations, 135. 
De Pressense, quoted, 213. 
Diana, temple of, 383. 
Dorner, quoted, 43. 
Ebionites, -214. 

Edersheim, quoted, 107, 304, 306. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 39. 
Elders, 280. 

Elders, appointed, 230. 
Elymas, the sorcerer, 192. 
Epaphras, 250. 
Epicureans, 139, 228. 
Eunuch, baptism of, 107. 
Evidence, cumulative, 148. 
Exorcism, 381. 
Expediency, 284, 332. 
Famine, in Jerusalem, 136, 294. 
Farrar. quoted, 183, 207, 209, 22#. 
Felix, 19. 
Festus, 19. 

Fisher. Prof. George P., quoted, 
154. 

Forgiveness, 24, 75, 78, 100, 319. 
(See remission). 



(27) 



417 



418 



INDEX 



Fortune, goddess of, 139. 
Future, the, 306. 
GaUio, 236. 
Gamaliel, 84, 330. 
Gibbon, quoted, 247. 
Godet. quoted. 184, 302. 
Gospel, universal, 109. 
Government. Roman, 188. 
Hackett, Dr. Horatio B.. quoted. 

16. 17, 311. 
Hades. 312. 
Hatred, 111. 
Herder, quoted, 43. 
Herod Agrippa I., 144. 
Herod Agrippa I., death of, 152. 
Herod Antipas, 145. 
Herod the Great, 145. 
Heroism, of the martyrs, 84. 
Holy Spirit, historic "presence of. 

12. 

Holy Spirit, promise of, 31. 
Holy Spirit, guidance of, 113, 117. 
Holy Spirit, in the church. 259 f. 
Impurity, of pagan worship, 211. 
Inspiration, 93, 310. 
Isaiah, quoted, 118. 
Jailer, converted. 225. 
James, the brother of the Lord. 
209. 

James, the martyr apostle, 143 f. 
Jerusalem, destruction of, 214. 
Jerusalem, superseded by Anti- 

och, 219. 
Jesus, a reality. 24. 
Jesus, messiahship of, 31. 
Jesus, Lamb of God, 35. 
Jesus, unique life of. 36. 
Jesus, Lord and Christ, 44. 
Jesus, fellowship of, 57. 
Jesus, love of. 59. 
Jesus, ha ted, 76. 
Jesus, method of. 99. 
Jesus, on the Cross, 100. 
Jesus, prediction of, 150. 
Jews, mockerv of, 71. 
John the Baptist. 34. 61. 
Johnjthe Baptist, message of, 149, 
Judson, Adoniram, 177. 
Justification, 366. 
Justin Martvr, 84. 
Kurtz, quoted, 285, 289, 309, 315. 
Law and Gospel, 92. 
Latimer, 84, 88. 
Lazarus, resurrection of, 76. 
Liberty, false, 129. 



Livingstone. David, 177. 
Lord's Day, 109. 
Lord's Supper, 316. 
Love, Christian, 30. 78. 
Love, as a principle of unity, 
293 f. 

Loyalty, to Christ, 132. 
Luther, quoted. 84, 197. 
Luke, author of Acts, 15, 16. 
Lydia. converted, 223. 
Macaulay. quoted. 184. 
Martyn, Henry. 177. 
Matthias, 307. 
Milton, quoted. 42. 
Ministry, 362. 
Miracles, 43. 75. 81. 
Miraculous, the. 20. 
Mishna. 324. 
Missions, defended, 126. 
Moloch. 339. 

Mystery, of the Gospel. 118. 

Neander, quoted, 50. 203. 

Necessitv. intellectual. 13. 

Nero. 144. 

Nero, death of, 154. 

Nero. Paul before, 242. 

Nero, burning of Rome, 248. 

Ordination. 370. 

Orthodoxy, 79. 80. 

Paganism, ancient. 181. 

Paley. William. 305. 

Parousia. 319. 

Patronus. Patrona, 285. 

Parker. Joseph, quoted. 202. 

Paul, characterized, 15. 

appeal to Caesar. 19. 241 ; 
conversion of. 166, 347 f; 
early date of Epistles. 21 ; 
as a martyr, 84 ; brought to 
Antioch, 133 ; sent out with 
Barnabas, 159; primacy of, 
161 : endowments of, 165 ; 
apostle of emancipation, 
168 ; preaching in Pisidian 
Antioch, 194; in Iconium, 
197; in Lystra. 198; crosses 
the ^Egean, 221 ; in Athens, 
229 ; connection with Roman 
officials, 243; imprisonment 
in Rome. 247; not penniless,. 
252; as organizer and uni- 
fier, 275 f; change of name, 
363 ; character of, 389 : in the 
storm. 411 ; companions in 
Rome. 416. 



INDEX 



419 



Pentecost, 31. 
Pentecost, sermon on, 33. 
Pentecost, preparation for, 34. 
Pentecost, birthday of the church, 
105. 

Persecution. 75, 79, 80, 99, 125. 
Peter, the apostle, 40. 
Peter, primacy of, 84, 160. 
Peter, true Jew, 112, 114. 
Peter, revelations to, 116. 
Peter, defense of Gentile Chris- 
tianity, 208. 
Phariseeism, 76. 
Phebe, Patrona, 285. 
Poetry, 42. 

Prayer, unspiritual. 31. 

Praver. in the first church, 63, 64, 

82, 151. 
Progress, 128. 
Prophecy. Messianic, 30. 
Pulpit, prostitution of, 38. 
Pulpit, sacredness of, 39. 
Pulpit, themes of. 40, 44. 
Rabbinical Schools. 323. 
Ramsay. Prof. W. M., quoted 13, 

14, .17. 18. 20. 206, 220, 246, 253. 

301. 

Ramsay, theory stated, 244. 
Reality, the soul of religion, 24. 
Remission of sins. 46. 
Renan, quoted, 124, 145, 232. 
Repentance, 46. 

Resurrection of Jesus. 35, 36, 305. 
312. 

Resurrection of Jesus, effect upon 

the Jews, 71. 
Retaliation, 75. 

Romans, hated by the Jews, 112. 
Rome. 247. 

Ruskin. quoted, 61, 333. 
Sabbath, Jewish. 109. 
Sabattier. quoted. 85, 104, 158. 
218. 240, 283. 



Sacrifice, human, 340. 
Sadduceeism, 77. 
Samaritans, conversion of, 108 
Sanday, Prof., quoted, 315. 
Sanhedrin, described, 83. 
Sanhedrin. maxim of, 89. 
Schaff, quoted, 43, 122, 311. 314, 
317. 

Scribes, learning of, 321. 

Sectarianism. 136. 

Sereius Paulus, 192. 

Silas, 212, 220, 291. 

Slaves, in the Roman Empire, 185. 

Smith, Henrv B.. quoted, 43. 

Sorcerers, 192, 193, 343. 

Stephen, martvrdom of. 89 f. 

Stoicism, 139, 229. 

Strauss, 22. 

Succession, apostolic. 54. 
Sunday, 307. 

Svnagogue, model of the church, 
281. 

Tanners, unclean, 113. 
Tennyson, quoted, 42. 
Theology, systematic, 23. 
Theophany,'of Stephen, 96. 
Thessalonica. church established, 
226. 

Timothy, student of Paul, 250. 
Titus, student of Paul, 250. 
Torquemada, 130. 
Traditionalism, 127, 322, 331. 
Tubingen, theory, 13. 
Uncleanness, ceremonial, 354. 
Union, Christian, 52, 388. 
Venus, worship of. 211. 
Victor Hugo, quoted. 145. 
Way, the, 22. 
Weiss, quoted, 306. 
We-narratives, 16. 
Whittier. quoted, 42, 306. 
Woman, treatment of among- the 
ancients, 368, 374. 376. 378. 



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